Report: Road easy 'until it approached Lake Pend Oreille'

SANDPOINT - Henry Villard was a business tycoon, a railroad magnate and a robber baron, of sorts. He was also the man who muscled his way into the presidency of the Northern Pacific Railroad and pushed its construction until east and west track crews met outside of Helena, Mont., at Hell's Gate Canyon in late August of 1883.

Only two weeks later, Villard hosted the driving of a “golden spike” at Gold Creek, Mont., in celebration of completing a northern tier, transcontinental route.

By the time he and a group of wealthy friends raised $36 million to buy 60 percent ownership of the Northern Pacific near the beginning of 1881, the railroad's prospects of completing a northern route looked grim. The project was two years past its deadline and Congress could repeal the charter that granted the railroad a total of 47 million acres at any time.

Coming through what is now Sandpoint, the crews were laying track at an amazing pace.

“They started the bridge across lake Pend Oreille in 1882 and finished it in 1883,” said Paul Rechnitzer, a railroad historian and journalist. “They were in a hurry.”

“You think they've got a gang down there working on it now?” he added, referring to the 30-person crew handling the current bridge upgrades that are scheduled for completion this fall. “When they originally built that section that runs from Sandpoint to Hope, they had as many as 6,000 people working on it one time.”

In some sections - such as the one running from the Columbia River to Lake Pend Oreille - more than 200 miles of track were laid in a month's time. In others - such as the terrain between Sandpoint and Missoula, Mont., it took 19 months to cover 194 miles.

In his 1883 report on the progress of the railroads to Congress, Secretary of War Robert T. Lincoln called the sections of track around Lake Pend Oreille “the most difficult portion of the whole line to construct.”

“The road was easy of construction until it approached Lake Pend d'Oreille, when the country becomes much broken,” the report stated. “Much trestle work is used, one stretch being 8,400 feet long, and the aggregate amounting to nearly three miles.”

Building trestles was the easiest way to cross rough terrain and marshy areas, according to local rail historian Richard Hutter, who said the crews would have been expert at bolting timbers together by the time they reached this neck of the woods.

“Besides, they had to cut the timber to keep moving forward anyway,” he said. “Might as well put it to good use.”