Northern Pacific Railroad in Redwater Valley

By editor

Circle, McCone County, Montana

In the annals of Montana’s railroad escapades, the Northern Pacific's foray into the Redwater Valley is a tale of ambition, competition, and a parade of iron horses that rolled in with all the subtlety of a herd of stampeding cattle. The story begins on May 27, 1927, when the Interstate Commerce Commission, that august body charged with regulating the nation’s railways, finally put an end to the jockeying among railroads eager to carve their names into the Redwater Valley’s rugged landscape. It handed the Northern Pacific Railroad the green light to build a sixty-two-mile stretch of track from Glendive all the way to Circle and Brockway.

This was no small feat, considering the terrain and the economics of the time. The Northern Pacific didn't just drop a railroad like a hat on the ground; it unleashed Foley Brothers to take the contract and start construction at a pace that would leave a tortoise gasping. The company wasted no time--surveyors had already poked around the wilderness, and soon the work began in earnest: roadbeds were graded, bridges constructed, fences erected, wells drilled, and corrals set up for the horses and mules that would haul materials. Horses and equipment were the unsung heroes of this industrial opera, hauling rails, ties, and lumber through the dust and the wind.

Approximately 1,500 folks found themselves employed by this enterprise--many of them locals who swapped their usual homes for tents or boxcars pitched along the route. Imagine a makeshift city that moved with the progress of the rails, camps alive with the clatter of hammers, the neighing of horses, and the occasional curse of a man who just dropped a rail on his toe. These hardy workers laid down 10,000 tons of steel rail, hammered in 200,000 ties, and stacked two million board feet of lumber, all for the princely sum of over $2,500,000--a king’s ransom in 1927 dollars, especially for McCone County’s empty expanses.

Sidings sprouted up like prairie grass at Green, Woodrow, Lindsay, Rimroad (named for the rim of Sheep Mountain, which, if you’ve never seen it, looks like a giant’s cracked egg shell), Valgate, Circle, and Friend, finally ending at Brockway. These sidings were not mere stops but hopes pinned on iron rails reaching further westward, dreams of expansion that never quite came to pass. Depots and agents manned posts at Lindsey (a misspelling that stubbornly made its way into the records), Circle, and Brockway. Circle also boasted the wool house, a vital link for the sheep ranchers who counted on the railroad to carry their fleeces to market.

The arrival of the railroad was cause for celebration the likes of which this quiet corner of Montana had never seen. On June 2, 1928, Circle threw a party that drew 10,000 people--an impressive number given the local population. The governor of Montana himself showed up, along with the president of the Northern Pacific Railroad, whose presence lent the occasion a certain gravitas. The Rathe News, a regional newspaper known for chronicling the odd and the important, was there to capture the moment for posterity.

The festivities could have been mistaken for a small state fair. There were parades, speeches that probably wandered off the rails into political promises, free train rides to Brockway, and the ceremonial driving of a golden spike--because no railroad celebration would be complete without a spike made of something precious, even if it was a bit gilded. The locals barbecued three steers and two hogs, feeding a crowd ready to dance the night away long after the last whistle of the iron horse had sung its tune. For many children, it was their first encounter with the clatter of pistons and the blast of the train’s whistle, sounds that would soon become part of their daily lives.

The railroad’s utility went far beyond mere transportation. It carried the lifeblood of the valley--cattle, sheep, and horses; farm products from wheat and barley to the occasional bushel of potatoes; relief supplies during the hard times of the Great Depression when even the toughest Montanans needed a helping hand; and poison to battle the grasshopper hordes that threatened to devour everything green. During the oil boom of the 1950s, the line hauled equipment and supplies essential to the drilling rigs that transformed parts of eastern Montana into oil country. Remarkably, the railroad even dispatched a special car to ferry a sick lady to medical care, a small but telling detail that underscores the railroad’s place in the community.

Yet, as with all things, time and circumstance conspired to render the line obsolete. The last train chugged into history in 1999, a victim of droughts that shriveled crops and cattle, the Second World War’s shifting priorities, improved roads that allowed trucks to deliver goods directly to customers, and a population that slowly thinned out as younger generations sought fortunes elsewhere. The railroads, once the lifelines of rural America, found themselves outpaced by the automobile and the semi-truck.

Today, the Circle Depot and Wool House serve as relics housed at the McCone County Museum, quietly reminding visitors of an era when the whistle of the iron horse meant progress, hope, and a connection to the wider world. As one local historian put it, “The railroad was more than steel and wood--it was the artery that pumped life into the valley.”

In the end, the Northern Pacific’s venture into Redwater Valley was a chapter written in sweat, steel, and dreams--some fulfilled, others left on the sidings. It’s a story of ambition meeting the stubbornness of the land, of people who built more than a railroad; they built a community’s hopes on rails stretching into the horizon.

See also

• Northern Pacific Railroad in Redwater Valley at Circle, McCone County
• An Important Era in Railroad History at Twin Bridges, Madison County
• Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas at Glendive, Dawson County