May 5, 1861: Creation of the Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad

On this day in 1861, the charter for the Nebraska & Lake Superior Railroad Company, designed to run from St. Paul to Omaha, was changed to instead create the Lake Superior & Mississippi (LS&M) from St. Paul to the westernmost tip of Lake Superior. Construction of the LS&M—designed as a portage railway to connect the Twin Cities to Jay Cooke’s Northern Pacific (NP) railway from the Head of the Lakes to Puget Sound—began in 1863 in St. Paul but was stopped by 1866 due to lack of funds. In 1867 Cooke became the LS&M’s chief investor and construction was revived. Both Duluth and Superior wanted the railroad, knowing that it would bring success to the city in which it terminated. Because St. Louis County helped Duluth come up with more money than Superior, Cooke chose Duluth. Construction from Duluth southward did not begin until 1868. Starting in downtown Duluth, laborers laid track essentially alongside the St. Louis River to Fond du Lac and on to Thomson. It was in Thomson on August 1, 1870, that the final spike was driven, completing the road. The LS&M failed following the Panic of 1873 and later reformed as the St. Paul & Duluth Railroad, which was later swallowed up by Northern Pacific.

While the LS&M went into receivership in 1875, it completed building a roundhouse on Rice’s Point in 1876. The next year the railroad was reorganized as the SP&D. (Image: Minnesota Historical Society)