For students and others who lived east or south of Chicago, the Columbia River Historical Expedition began in Chicago on the morning of Thursday, July 15. Echoing the subject of the students’ oratory, they heard a lecture from historian and … Continue reading
Eight of the papers that the Great Northern commissioned for the Upper Missouri and Columbia River Historical Expeditions were written by St. Paul native Grace Flandrau. Handpicked by Louis Hill and Ralph Budd, Flandrau was a strange choice, as she … Continue reading
The Upper Missouri Expedition generated a lot of good will for the Great Northern. The 19 editorials reprinted from papers from Portland to Boston in Editorial Comment on the Upper Missouri Historical Expedition of 1925 were only the tip of … Continue reading
On July 21, the Upper Missouri Special went to the railway’s summit on the southern boundary of Glacier Park where the GN had commissioned the sculptor, Gaetano Cecere, to do a statue of John F. Stevens. Then just 31 years … Continue reading
The Upper Missouri Special arrived in East Glacier on July 20, and members of the expedition then returned by auto about 27 miles east to a rail station known as Bombay, but which the Great Northern renamed Meriwether for the … Continue reading
On July 19 the Upper Missouri Special arrived in Havre at 8 am, where expedition members made an auto trip to the site of the last battle of Chief Joseph’s Nez Perce Indians, about 15 miles south of the Great … Continue reading
The Upper Missouri Expedition spent July 18 at the site of Fort Union, which had been the chief trading post for Astor’s American Fur Company from about 1828 to 1867. Located just east of the North Dakota-Montana border, the fort … Continue reading
On the morning of July 17th, the Upper Missouri Special arrived in a town of about 75 people in North Dakota that had been named Falsen. However, Budd had persuaded the Post Office to rename it Verendrye after an early … Continue reading
William Crooks was the first chief engineer of the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad (the original predecessor of the Great Northern). That railroad’s locomotive number 1 was named for him, and this “autobiography” is of the locomotive, not the engineer. … Continue reading
