St. Paul and Duluth Railroad

The St. Paul and Duluth Railroad, a Minnesota and Wisconsin railroad, was reorganized from the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad in 1877. It was bought by the Northern Pacific Railway in 1900. Renamed the "Skally Line", it operated from Saint Paul, Minnesota to Duluth, Minnesota, with branches to Minneapolis, Minnesota, Taylors Falls, Minnesota, Kettle River, Minnesota and Cloquet, Minnesota, and to Grantsburg, Wisconsin and Superior, Wisconsin.

According to "The Story of Minnesota" published by the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Sunday edition in 1964, James Root, engineer of the St. Paul and Duluth Railroad Steam Locomotive No. 4, was heading to south to St. Paul from Duluth with 400 passengers aboard when the train arrived at Hinckley, Minnesota in the middle of the historic Great Hinckley Fire of 1894. Root rescued several people escaping from the fire and quickly reversed course racing through flames heading back north toward Duluth stopping at a swamp that locals called "Skunk Lake," now marked as a historical site on the Willard Munger State Trail named after a highly regarded, long term, late Duluth, Minnesota State politician Willard Munger. The site is about 4.5 miles north of Hinckley and 8.5 miles south of Finlayson, Minnesota. At that site, the crew, the escapees and the passengers took a respite and cooled off in the water on that fateful day.

Root suffered cuts from flying glass that came from bursting locomotive and passengers car windows in the intense heat (The engine was in reverse so that the cars were in front of his open cab on a steam locomotive. Therefore, Smoke, flames, embers, and debris would come directly in on him without protection. Today, locomotives are required to have a fully enclosed cab for safety.)

Upon arrival at "Skunk Lake," Root was incoherent and nearly unconscious from smoke inhalation and heat exhaustion. He also was severely burned when the engine, its coal tender and other cars were damaged when passing through the inferno. Note that 400 people were killed in the wildfire, an amount about equal to the number of souls originally aboard engine No. 4 that day before Root took on several escapees before heading back north. Root's and his crew's heroic efforts that day perhaps reduced the death toll by as much as 50 percent.

Today, the Willard Munger State Trail runs for about 65 miles along the original St. Paul and Duluth Railroad right-of-way from the north end in West Duluth just south of Grand Ave. at its intersection with 75th Ave. West and Pulaski St. near the Lake Superior Zoo in Norton Park to the southern terminus at the intersection of 2nd St. NW and Old Hwy. 61 about two blocks north of the Hinckley Fire Museum at the site of the original St. Paul and Duluth Railroad Depot rebuilt after the fire and later named the Northern Pacific Railway Depot after the latter railroad purchased the former one (see also Disposition, below). The building today is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Disposition

The line was purchased by the Northern Pacific Railway in 1900 which was succeeded by the Burlington Northern in 1970 when the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railway merged with the Great Northern Railway, the Northern Pacific Railway, and the Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railway and then on the final day of 1996, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway merged with the Burlington Northern Railway to form the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. Most of the line became redundant after the 1970 Burlington Northern merger, as it paralleled lines of the Great Northern Railway and Northern Pacific Railway. Most of the latter line originally associated with the St. Paul and Duluth Railroad was abandoned and many segments were turned into rail trails.

The disposition of segments, all within Minnesota, is as follows:

St. Paul to Maplewood: abandoned; now part of the Bruce Vento Regional Trail
Maplewood to Hugo: now operated by the Minnesota Commercial Railway
Hugo to North Branch: abandoned; now the Hardwood Creek Regional Trail and Sunrise Prairie Trail
North Branch to Hinckley: now operated by the St. Croix Valley Railroad
Hinckley to Duluth: abandoned; now the Willard Munger State Trail (see above).

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