Anticipation

Monday, September 3, 1883: An elegant party was held in St. Paul to celebrate completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad -- which ran from St. Paul all the way to the Pacific coast. (The party was a bit premature: the final connection wasn't made until September 8.) The President of the railroad, Henry Villard, greeted esteemed guests including the President of the USA Chester A. Arthur, retired general Ulysses S. Grant and Grant's buddy General Philip Sheridan. Later that year, Sheridan would become Commander General of the US Army. In that capacity, he helped protect the railroads by "pacifying" the native tribes in the west.

Here's a brilliant song by Eilen Jewell that references railroads.

Coincidentally, September 3 also marks the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended the American revolution and established the good old USA as a free and independent republic. The western border of the country was the Mississippi river, with the rest still occupied by France and England and Spain and Mexico. It took a few more wars and a few more treaties to follow the railroads to the Pacific ocean.

Ben Franklin was one of the signatories to the Treaty of Paris. He would go on to establish the US Post Office, invent a wood stove, father several children with French prostitutes, and found a chain of small department stores.

The French helped us win the Revolutionary War (thanks, General Lafayette!) but would later test our alliance by foisting Yves Montand upon the world. Here's Mr. Montand advising us to use an alternative to the rapacious railroads.

Don't mess with lumberjacks

It was a hot July in 1871. Lumberjacks working along the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers had been quenching their thirst with whiskey and beer. Then they heard that some big railroad company was building a bridge across the St. Croix near Hudson, Wisconsin. The bridge would be built on hundreds of pilings driven into the riverbed, which would work fine for the railroad but would interfere with the annual floating of felled trees from the north woods to the mills in Stillwater. On July 7, a rowdy bunch of lumberjacks marched to the river near Hudson, removed about 100 of the pilings, and dragged them back to Stillwater, where they built a massive bonfire and drank some more.

The event becomes known as the "Battle of the Piles."(I will refrain from any stupid references to the human posterior.)

The lumber interests prevailed (for a few years) in defending their stomping grounds. Not many lumber mills in Stillwater any more, but you can still get whiskey and beer.