1000 Miles Too Far

The Late, Great Milwaukee Road
And Its Pacific Coast Extension



In the darkness of early March 15, 1980, the last train of the Milwaukee Road left Tacoma yard and headed east. The dream of the Pacific Coast Extension was dead.

The Milwaukee Road was a successful granger line earning a profit hauling grain from the Upper Midwest to market. The joint ownership of the Northern Pacific, Great Northern, and Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroads by rail magnate James Hill denies the Milwauke Road any share of the traffic from the booming Pacific Northwest. To prevent itself from becoming trapped in the Midwest, the Milwaukee Road built the Pacific Coast Extension in the early 1900's, and set about making itself into a Chicago-Seattle transcontinental.

Map.

The Road spared no expense. It had the best-engineered line in the West, taking full advantage of the best steel and concrete technology to vault the ravines and coulees and the most of modern machinery to lay the mountains low. And then it really took a bold step - the Milwaukee electrified two major lengths of its line (Harlowton, Montana to Avery, Idaho; and Othello, Washington to Tacoma, Washington), the only Western mainline railroad to do so. Electric locomotives, more powerful and easier to maintain than the steam locomotives of the age, would haul the freight trains of the Milwaukee.

And in so doing, they bankrupted themselves. Though it would know a few brief periods of success, the Milwaukee Road would spend the rest of its life near or in bankruptcy. When the third bankrputcy came in the 1970's, the Milwaukee management decided to leave the West, and in 1980 abandoned everything west of Miles City, Montana.



Keith Anderson Collection.

And that is why the story of the Milwaukee Road's Pacific Coast Extension is worth telling. Despite the sacrifices of seventy years of employees battling Nature and five mountain ranges, the Milwaukee failed. Inept management, corrupt management, and the Hill Lines proved too much to overcome. The lives and money spent building the line, and the blood, sweat and tears spent keeping the line open, was for nothing.

The Milwaukee Road became the only transcontinental railroad ever abandoned.

You can still see the bones of the Pacific Coast Extension. The grade parallels I-90 between Butte and Missoula, Montana. You can see the line again from I-90 crossing Snoqualmie Pass in Washington, its giant steel viaducts visible to the south as you race towards Issaquah. The loop grade up to St. Paul Pass in Idaho is a Forest Service trail, bridges, tunnels, and all. The great bridge over the Columbia River at Beverly, Washington still stands. But the tracks are gone.

In the last decade, the Milwaukee Road's senior management did its best to forget the Pacific Coast Extension. No money for maintenance, no interest in revitalizing its transcontinental route, no desire to make the best route over the Cascade mountains make money. It gave up and hid. Milwaukee's management demanded great sacrifices from its employees, and then abandoned them, in the largest railroad abandonment in American history.

And in the darkness of early morning, March 15, 1980, the Milwaukee Road slipped out of the Northwest, never to return.

For more:
Milwaukee Road Historical Association
Helmut's Lines West Page
Milwaukee Road Online