WaltersRail : BNSF: Bozeman Pass

A westbound BNSF manifest is climbing to the summit of Bozeman Pass.

On July 15, 1806, William Clark and ten men were traveling eastward in what became Montana toward the Yellowstone River, planning to rendezvous with Meriwether Lewis who was exploring to the north -- both looking for the easiest passage out of the mountains. Ahead of Clark stood a rock wall, the latest in a series of impediments that stretched from the High Plains all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

One mountain ridge after another had destroyed the dream of a navigable water passage across North America. Surely Clark had began to wonder if any commercial passage at all were possible, so steep and rugged were the mountains, so deep the valleys, so fantastic the distances.

Clark was guided by the Native American Sacagawea, who led Clark and his men between the Bridger and Gallatin mountains through what came to be called Bozeman Pass.

Clark wrote: “The indian woman who has been of great Service to me as a pilot through this Country recommends a gap in the mountain more South which I shall cross.” The survey party followed a “well beaten buffalow road” to “the top of the dividing ridge between the waters of the Missouri from those of the river Rochehone [Yellowstone].”

The pass is named for John Bozeman, who in the early 1860's established the Bozeman Trail through the mountains. However, the pass had been used for thousands of years by tribes following bison migrations. When the Northern Pacific built westward in 1883, it followed the same route, as did the first highway in 1912, replaced in 1926 by U.S 10, followed by Interstate 90 in 1956.

Montana

Bozeman Pass

Westbound grain approaches the Bozeman Pass summit.

More loaded grain.

West of Billings, Montana, Interstate 90 and the BNSF follow the valley of the Yellowstone River over 100 miles to Livingston. In some places, the valley is wide and bucolic, with little to no hint of the mountains lurking nearby. Other places the river runs between narrow canyon walls, and the mountains peer down like Roman Senators watching a gladiatorial fight to the death.

West of Livingston both railroad and interstate begin an intense 12 mile climb to the summit. The Bridger Mountains rise to the north, while the Gallatin Mountains stand guard to the south. Virtually all westbound trains receive a helper set at Livingston. When your author was last along the tracks in October 2024, two helper sets were on duty around the clock and were busy all day and night.

I believe the ruling grade for westbounds is two percent, 1.8 percent for eastbounds, though available information on this point varies. Westbounds really struggle. The grade out of Livingston is long and sustained. The many loaded coal and grainers often creep westward at 10 miles per hour or even less.

These westbound stacks have just departed Livingston and the Yellowstone River Valley and are already straining into the grade.

Eastbound stacks are descending the hill.

After the United States completed the Louisiana Purchase -- which included most of present day Louisiana, all of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota, plus large portions of Colorado, Minnesota, Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota -- President Jefferson tasked his private secretary Meriwether Lewis to lead an expedition to explore the new land, almost completely unknown to Americans at the time, long the province of multiple Native American tribes. Lewis asked his friend Lieutenant William Clark to co-lead the mission, and Clark, along with 30 others, set out from Camp Dubois Illinois, on May 14, 1804. This group met Lewis and ten others in St. Charles, Missouri, where the whole party turned northwest up the Missouri River.

President Jefferson's instructions to the expedition stated:

The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri River, & such principle stream of it, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado or any other river may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent for the purpose of commerce.

The expedition followed the Missouri River through what is now Kansas City, Missouri, and on to what became Omaha, Nebraska, where on August 20, 1804, Sergeant Charles Floyd died, the only member to pass during the expedition. He was buried at a bluff along the river at what is now Sioux City, Iowa.

https://www.studentsofhistory.com/lewis-clark-the-corps-of-discovery

This westbound manifest has just cleared the summit tunnel and is rolling downgrade to Bozeman.

The expedition camped for the winter in the Mandan Nation's territory in what became North Dakota, where Lewis and Clark met with Mandan chiefs and were introduced to a French-Canadian fur trapper, Toussaint Charbonneau, and his two native wives, one of whom was a teenage Shoshone named Sacagawea, pregnant with her first child. Your author has never spent a winter in North Dakota, but his grandfather once worked his way north from Oklahoma during the wheat harvest and spent December and January near the Canadian border. Your author's grandfather thought he was about to die in the cold, but he managed to survive, for which your author is eternally grateful.

Charbonneau joined the expedition as translator, as did Sacagawea, whose knowledge of the western mountains proved invaluable. Clark wrote in his journal:

French man by Name Chabonah, who Speaks the Big Belley language visit us, he wished to hire & informed us his 2 Squars were Snake Indians, we engau him to go on with us and take one of his wives to interpret the Snake language.

Lewis's journal noted the birth of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau on February 11, 1805, commenting that another of the party's native interpreters administered crushed rattlesnake rattles to speed the delivery. Clark nicknamed the boy "Pompy." He called the mother "Janey."

In April 1805, after the worst of the North Dakota winter had passed, the expedition left Fort Mandan and headed up the Missouri River. Even at that late date, the party still believed that they could find a river route to the Pacific Ocean, even though they had been heading upstream since leaving St. Charles. Unless they believed that water from the Pacific was flowing downhill all the way to St. Louis, it should have occurred to someone that sooner or later they would reach a divide -- where rivers flowed either east or west depending upon which side of the divide they commenced -- making a direct river route impossible. It also should have occurred to someone that the divide was likely located in mountains that would not be easily crossed. If such thoughts did occur, however, they were never noted in anyone's journal.

Westbound grain straining into the grade at sundown.

This empty eastbound oil train has crossed the summit and is descending to Livingston.

The current of the Missouri River was so strong that expedition boats had to be pulled by crew along the river bans. Capsized craft were common. Sacagawea rescued items that had fallen out of an overturned boat, including the journals and records of Lewis and Clark, and the Sacagawea River was named in her honor. Of ourse, the natives had long held other names for the rivers of the Northwest, but the Amerricans were oblivious to this, and to so much else as well.

In August 1805, the expedition was trading for horses with the Shoshone -- before attempting to cross the Rocky Mountains, whose peaks had given Lewis and Clark their first inkling that perhaps passage to the Pacific would not be easy, nor by water. Sacagawea interpreted for the expedition and discovered that the tribe's leader, Cameahwait, was her brother.

An eastbound manifest climbing the western slope of Bozeman Pass.

Westbound coal at the bottom of the hill.

The Lewis and Clark expedition did not cross Bozeman Pass on its initial journey west, instead following the Missouri River south through Great Falls, then ascending Lemhi Pass in the Bitterroot Range, a difficult crossing that no railroad or major highway ever attempted. On the return journey, the expedition split in two, with Lewis following a more northerly route and Clark exploring to the south, crossing Bozeman Pass on July 15, 1806, on the advice of Sacagawea. Clark described his trip over the pass:

we collected our horses and after an early brackft at 8 A M Set out and proceeded up the branch to the head thence over a low gap in the mountain . . . prosueing an old buffalow road which enlargenes by one which joins it from the most Easterly branch of the Gallatin River East fork of Galetins R. proceeding down the branch a little to the N. of East keeping on the North Side of the branch to the River rochejhone [Yellowstone] at which place I arrived at 2 P M. The Distance from the three forks of the Easterly fork of Galletines river (from whence it may be navigated down with Small Canoes) to the river Rochejhone is 18 miles on an excellent high dry firm road with very incoiderable hills.

Your author does not know what "incoiderable" means. Neither does your author's wife. In any event, this is a rough description of the path later followed by the Northern Pacific.

Loaded coal rolling downgrade toward Bozeman.

Pushers on westbound manifest.

Bozeman Pass was one of three options considered by Northern Pacific engineers. One would have come down the Missouri River Valley via Sixteen-Mile Creek, the passage subsequently chosen by the Milwaukee Road. This would not have required a major tunnel, but the summit at Loweth was substantial, as the Milwaukee Road later discovered. Also, it was about sixty miles longer. The other would have run to Helena by following the Missouri River through the Gates of the Mountains, requiring an even greater detour to the North. Chief Engineer W. Milnor Roberts believed Bozeman Pass the best option, although construction would require a major tunnel at the top.

Many sources refer to the original 1880's bore as the “Muir Tunnel” after James Muir, a contractor on the project. A small station/post office arose on the eastern portal and was named “Muir.” The west side was called “West End.”

Work east and west began in early 1882, and crews immediately encountered slides and cave-ins during excavation of tunnel approaches. The engineers built sluices to carry away water, and eventually construction reached rock. The July construction report stated:

Owing to very wet weather at the Bozeman Tunnel, the progress in the approaches has been very slow, but the rainy season being about over, better progress may be expected and the West approach is likely to be completed in August and the East one in September.

Black powder blasting followed, with debris cleared by mule carts. Workers added an interior wooden frame for tunnel support, but construction proceeded with excruciating slowness, so the railroad built a temporary track over the summit to allow traffic to proceed -- with a ruling grade of almost five percent.

The chief engineer reported that during the winter of 1882-1883, 1,266 feet were excavated from the east end and 641 feet from the west end, more than half the total distance. He estimated another six months of work remained. "[P]rogress," he said, "has more than equaled my expectations.”

Helper set on the hill.

Westbound loaded coal near the top of the hill.

The tunnel was completed December 22, 1883, and track was quickly laid through the mountain, with the first train passing January 20, 1884. Sixteen feet wide and almost twenty feet high, the tunnel reduced the climb across Bozeman Pass by about 300 feet and allowed the railroad to maintain a two percent westbound grade.

In September 1885, the wooden timbers inside the tunnel caught fire, almost certainly ignited by a passing train. The railroad closed both tunnel mouths, unsuccessfully hoping to suffocate the blaze. Next the Northern Pacific brought water in tank cars up the mountain, hoping to spray the fire into submission, but this tactic also failed. The fire roared through the tunnel, consuming all the wood so carefully installed, and the railroad, with no choice but to let it burn, built another track over the top of the hill.

The fire finally burned itself out after about five months. It took about another six before the rubble inside the damaged tunnel was cleared and re-boring operations completed. On July 1, 1896, the tunnel was reopened, though restoration work continued. Walls were lined with concrete, the arched ceiling with brick. Repairs continued off and on into the 20th century.

A "meet" at Muir just east of the tunnel.

Westbound led by the BNSF heritage unit.

As a man ages, repairs to his body become more difficult. A broken leg at 15 is one thing, a break at 75 quite another. The same is true for railroad tunnels. The Bozeman Pass bore never fully recovered from the fire, though trains ran through it for many years. It was like a door about to fall off its hinges that nevertheless continues to open and close, though everyone knows that sooner or later it will fall to the ground. Constant maintenance was required to keep the tunnel open -- a death warrant.

Construction began on a replacement tunnel in 1943, 100 feet north of the original. The new tunnel was to be several hundred feet shorter with a gentler grade. Upon completion of initial dirt work, boring began in early 1944. A longer bore came from the east end, meeting a shorter bore from the west under the mountain. Blasting occurred once every 24 hours. Dynamite was placed in dozens of 14 foot holes in the rock, designed to explode sequentially from the center. After cessation of the explosions, dump trucks backed into the tunnel and were loaded with debris by an electric shovel , as opposed to the hand-shovels and mule-drawn carts of the 19th century.

Instead of the wooden supports that reinforced the first Bozeman Tunnel, the new tunnel had smooth concrete walls and an arched ceiling, measuring eighteen feet wide and twenty-four feet tall. The last train ran through the original tunnel July 28, 1945.

A loaded grainer enters the east portal of the new tunnel.

Grain climbing the western slope of Bozeman Pass. The west side of the hill is half the distance of the east -- about six miles. Interstate 90 is in the background.

Construction of the Northern Pacific was fantastically expensive, mostly because the railroad crossed some of the most rugged terrain imaginable -- forests of Minnesota, Missouri River crossing in North Dakota, canyons and mountains of Montana, Idaho and Washington. The railroad cost too much and produced too little.

Capitalism is sometimes described as ruthless, uncaring, violent -- survival of the fittest. Nineteenth century railroad construction was often described in Malthusian terms; i.e., some companies would survive, others would fail and the country as a whole would profit from the competition.

The theory did not hold in practice. For the most part, when railroads failed, they did not die. The law allowed insolvent companies to be preserved as zombies stumbling forward into reorganization at the expense of creditors and competitors. Railroads in receivership could suspend interest payments to bond holders, allowing shipping rates to be lowered. Competitors not in receivership had little choice but to lower rates, increasing the likelihood that profitable companies would also plunge into insolvency.

Courts were hesitant to liquidate unprofitable lines to satisfy creditors; railroads were considered a public good. The public interest demanded that a company like the Northern Pacific, stretching from the Twin Cities to Puget Sound, not be sacrificed to pay a supplier of toilet paper or coal.

The Northern Pacific went into receivership twice: first in 1893, then again in 1931 -- both following massive financial panics.

At the beginning of the 20th century, an attempt was made to rescue the Northern Pacific and its parallel competitor Great Northern. The Northern Securities Company was created in 1901 by E. H. Harriman, James J. Hill and J. P. Morgan and combined the Northern Pacific; Great Northern; and Chicago, Burlington and Quincy. Hill was the president.

At that time, railroads were generally viewed as malignant monopolists intent on destroying all that was proper and good under God's heaven -- whether or not they were viable corporate entities. Harriman, Hill and Morgan were considered "robber barons." So in 1902, the Northern Securities Company was sued by the Justice Department under the Sherman Antitrust Act. The government asked the courts to undo the merger and force the combined companies to continue operations independently.

Downgrade to Livingston.

Westbound.

As I write, I have practiced law for over 46 years. In my experience, judges decide cases on what they think is fair and right under the prejudices of the times, then look for law to support their decision. If railroads are looked down upon as somehow evil, as in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, then judges will rules against railroads. If railroads are considered more or less harmless, as in the 21st century, or even considered in need of public assistance, as in the last half of the 20th century, then judges will rule in their favor. In the Northern Securities case, five Supreme Court justices voted to uphold the decision of the Circuit Court of Appeals that under the prejudices of the times it was fair and right to prohibit the merger.

Justice Harlan wrote for the majority. His opinion more or less assumes that the combination of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific would restrain trade, even though the Northern Pacific had recently come out of receivership and had never been profitable. And though the Great Northern had avoided receivership after the Panic of 1893, it was balancing on the precipice of failure. The opinion makes this assumption because that was the prejudice of the times.

The majority opinion spends almost its entire length affirming the federal government's right to disassemble a merger created under state law. Then in one breathtaking statement, it concludes, without discussion, that the combination of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern constituted restraint of trade. The CB&Q is not even mentioned.

However that company [Northern Securites] may have acquired for itself any stock in the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railway companies, no matter how it obtained the means to do so, all the stock it held or acquired in the constituent companies was acquired and held to be used in suppressing competition between those companies. It came into existence only for that purpose.

That's it. The Court simply assumed that the combination of two railroads losing money would restrain interstate commerce. It was the prejudice of the times.

Justice Holmes wrote the dissent for the four Justices who disagreed.

According to popular speech, every concern monopolizes whatever business it does, and if that business is trade between two States, it monopolizes a part of the trade among the States. Of course, the statute does not forbid that. It does not mean that all business must cease. A single railroad down a narrow valley or through a mountain gorge monopolizes all the railroad transportation through that valley or gorge. Indeed, every railroad monopolizes, in a popular sense, the trade of some area. Yet I suppose no one would say that the statute forbids a combination of men into a corporation to build and run such a railroad between the States.

Justice Holmes then found the heart of the matter:

There is a natural feeling that somehow or other the statute [Sherman Act] meant to strike at combinations great enough to cause just anxiety on the part of those who love their country more than money.

In other words, the combination of two railroads running across the northwestern United States "caused just anxiety" and therefore should be prohibited.

One more in the ongoing parade of grainers.

Another.

By 1970, the prejudice of the times had changed. Passenger train service was almost dead; Amtrak was created a year later. Railroads across the country were sinking like rocks. Another attempt was made to merge the CB&Q, Great Northern and Northern Pacific (along with the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway), and this time the Supreme Court saw things differently.

Since the decision in Northern Securities, Congress had by statute (the Transportation Act of 1920 as amended in 1940) required the Interstate Commerce Commission to approve proposed railroad mergers if "consistent with the public interest" under terms "just and reasonable." This sort of statutory language is common and, honestly, can mean about whatever a reviewing court wants. Congress passed the statute because of, to use the Supreme Court's language, "the declining fortunes of rail carriers."

After protracted proceedings that, among several things, lined the pockets of many lawyers, the ICC approved the proposed merger. The Supreme Court affirmed in a unanimous decision (Justice Douglas recusing) by Chief Justice Burger, stating:

On the entire record we cannot say that . . . the Commission has done other than give effect to the Transportation Act of 1920 as amended in 1940, which vested in the Commission the responsibility of balancing the values of competition against the need for consolidation of rail transportation units.

In your author's opinion, the major change between 1904 and 1970 was the prejudice of the times. By 1970, railroads were no longer perceived as evil. By 1970, railroads were perceived as needing help. In fact, however, the financial situation of the Northern Pacific had changed little in those 66 years. The Northern Pacific had never made money. It had been in and out of receivership twice.

What drives the law, what drives discourse in general among humans, is the prejudice of the times.

Thus, beginning in 1970, the newly constituted Burlington Northern began running trains across Bozeman Pass.

Eastbound BN stacks leaving Livingston.

Eastbound exiting the summit tunnel.

Westbound loaded grain climbing to the summit.

And then came Montana Rail Link. On October 31, 1987, Missoula businessman Dennis Washington commenced a 60-year lease of Burlington Northern's southern Montana main line between Sandpoint, Idaho and Huntley, Montana. This spin-off occurred during contract negotiations between Burlington Northern and the United Transportation Union, and although MRL workers were represented by various unions, the move was considered by many to be BN's way of "sticking it" to the UTU.

A majority of MRL trains were actually BNSF movements, complete with BN locomotives, that MRL received at one end of its track and forwarded back to BNSF at the other end. MRL also operated local freights serving industries along its lines.

MRL 119 (originally a Northern Pacific GP9) leads a local west up Bozeman Pass. The signal tower was replaced long ago.

An eastbound local (led by MRL 125, another former GN GP 9) climbing the west side of the hill.

Freshly painted MRL 351 (an SD45-2, formerly BN 6445) sits in the Livingston yard.

Eastbound manifest climbing the western slope. The lead unit is MRL 393 still in its “as-delivered” scheme from the Wisconsin Southern (was WSOR 1003) – originally BN 6635. Thanks to Art Jacobsen for the information on this unit.

In January 2022, BNSF agreed to pay MRL two billion dollars for early termination of the 60 years lease. The Surface Transportation Board (successor to the Interstate Commerce Commission) approved the transaction on March 8, 2023, and BNSF took over operations of MRL on January 1, 2024. (All BNSF images in this article were taken in October 2024.) At the time of the transition, approximately 90 percent of traffic on the MRL was BNSF run-through freights. Thus, according to your author's best wild ass guess, BNSF wanted all that revenue for itself. When in doubt, follow the money.