blackfoot-valley

northern tier of the United States. The first transconti- nental railroad was completed in 1869 with the driving of the symbolic golden spike in Utah near the northern shore of the Great Salt Lake, cutting the time it took to cross the count- ry from an average six months to six days - a pivotal develop- ment that was to transform the American West. The Northern Pacific Railroad had been chart- ered in 1864 but due to finan- cial difficulties began laying tracks west from Duluth only in 1870. The rails progressed slowly, until in the summer of 1883 the eastern tracks met those extending from the Pacific to complete the northern route between Duluth and Portland. The place of the meeting where the now-traditional golden spike was driven was near the confluence of Gold Creek with the Clark Fork - quite fittingly, close to where Montana’s first gold strike had taken place 33 years before, though by this time the boom that was in full swing was that of copper, not gold. Nearby at Garrison the Northern Pacific tracks were joined at the same time to those of the Utah and Northern, which had pushed north from Ogden, thus linking both transcontinental lines and thereby tying together a large part of the West with steel rails. While the Northern Pacific didn’t itself enter the Nevada / Blackfoot Valleys, it did pass close enough at Avon to help make the area accessible to those who wished to investigate it, even more than the Mullan Road, which had followed the same route in this section. A decade after the Northern Pacific was pushed through, the Great Northern ran its tracks up the Missouri and Milk rivers to cross the northern tier of Montana by the early 1890s. Finally, the Milwaukee Road (Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, & Pacific) built its right of way across Montana, up the Musselshell and down the Clark Fork. Later it switched from steam to elec- tric power. That line is now just a memory in Montana. It ran its last freight train in the state in 1980, and pulled up the tracks shortly after. During its high period, it was viewed as the finest rail line ever built, but the hoped 78