The Headwaters and Hope


Crossing the Missouri at Lombard, the Road turns and rolls down the west bank of the mighty Missouri River.  The mainline finds a much smaller river here than its mainline crossing at Mobridge, or even its secondary line crossing at Chamberlain, SD.  The river length itself is over 2500 miles long.  It begins here at the feet of the Rocky Mountains and heads east, through the open grasslands that awed Lewis and Clark, down amongst the fertile fields of America's breadbasket, and into the Mississippi at St. Louis.  The railroad itself is more than 1400 miles into its own journey, but where the river stops, and the waters no longer flow towards the Mississippi, the old transcon will push further up and further in.

The headwaters of the Missouri lie now at the very doorstep of the mainline as it makes its way to the small town of Three Forks.  The land is already more rocky and arid, approaching the rain shadow cast by the Rockies.  Three Forks was named for the three rivers that come together as the Missouri, named by the Corps of Discovery after Jefferson, Gallatin, and Madison.  In some ways, the scene before the Milwaukee Road is little changed from the days of Lewis, Clarke, and the Corps of Discovery.  The seemingly eternal landscape spoke then as it did in the days of Olympians and Columbians, as it still does today.  

Zane Grey in his book, "Riders of the Purple Sage" thought of Western Lands when reflecting that the wind ...
"... was fresh, cool, fragrant, and it carried a burden of far-off things - of other places where reigned peace.  It carried too, sad truth of human hearts and mystery -- of promise and hope unquenchable."  
There is both hope and sadness in these miles and places.  There is the hope of the West, an indescribable pull of something greater than what is apparent at a glance.  There is the hope of finding the answer to some plaguing and unknown question, that perhaps the sad longings that are in the hearts of men might find the antidote to what plagues them.  And there is sadness that the times pass away, taking with them the hopes of men and their memories of what came before.  Their triumphs, trials, and stories all passing away.  The sun rises one more time, but this time, without them.  

Steeped in hope and sadness, the Milwaukee route to the Pacific presses on - further up and further in - to the rain shadows and rain forests that lie ahead.  It has outlasted the hopes and dreams of the men who built her and many who knew her, and lies now as a fading memory and fading hope for something different. 

Comments

oamundsen@aol.com said…
Doggone it Leland you know how to write! Lovely piece of work and aptly tells why some folks have visions of great things and others pursue mean little plots of greed and self service. Nice.
6/02/2016 04:45:00 PM
LinesWest said…
Thank you sir - always good to hear from you and thanks for the encouragement.
6/03/2016 03:11:00 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Place Where She Only Sleeps

Image
 Location: MP 1566.8 Grant-Kohrs Ranch Not far from Deer Lodge, headed west on the transcon we arrive here, at Grant-Kohrs Ranch where the Resourceful Railroad only sleeps.  Instead of empty right of way and scattered gravel, steel rail still binds the land in this place that is unlike the many other hundreds of miles along Lines West.  Across the Grant-Kohrs Ranch, on federal Park lands, the railroad only seems to rest and slumber while waiting for a new time to come.  Against the backdrop of Montana clouds that hold no rain, the catenary poles can still be found here standing against the endless skies.  The lineside poles that mark an era of railroading now gone still hold to the right of way.  It is not hard to imagine them whipping by outside the windows of an Olympian under the electrified power of a Quill or Joe.  Perhaps an XL Special could easily whisk across the scene above as though decades had never passed. Things don't seem so forgotten or beyond hope in a place like th
Read more

Rock-a-bye bye bye?

Image
There are footnotes to history and there are chapters. Dependent on your perspective, sometimes those footnotes deserve a book unto themselves. As the economy sagged in the seventies, railroads were hit hard. The East saw a general collapse in the form of Penn Central. As the seventies wore on, the PC would be combined with several other bankrupt roads to form Conrail, a government backed corporation who's sole goal was to save rail transportation in the eastern half of the country. Collapse worked its way through the western lines during these years as well. The Milwaukee Road pulled out of the West just over 30 years ago at the beginning of March. Bankrupt and reeling, its retreat to the Midwest would last only a few more years until its absorption by Soo Line. Its competitors in the West and Northwest managed to hang on, but healthy balance sheets were not to be found in the board rooms of the Cascade Green lines in those years. The Rock Island had a long flirtation with
Read more

Hidden in the Trees

Image
 MP1613.1, Ravenna, MT.  Substation 9  I once met the man who owned the old Substation at Ravenna.  In one of those strange twists of history, so I'm told, it was supposed to be torn down and sold for scrap as the bricks had value.  But the original sale didn't work, the scrapper never came and it remains standing near the howling roar of I90 to this day. I90 is just one part of  the U.S. system that moves upwards of 90% of freight by truck and highway.  But tucked in amongst the tall pines like a mirage, Ravenna looks out blankly towards that interstate and shouts quietly back about a different time. The year was 1972 and General Electric had put together a unique proposal: completion of the electrified railway portion of the Milwaukee Road.  In a formal proposal, offered by GE itself ("Proposal for the Completion of the Electrified Railway Operation of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company") via the Locomotive Products Department, the proposa
Read more