Great Northern Passenger Station
The St. Paul, Minneapolis, & Manitoba Railway, renamed the Great Northern Railway in 1890, reached Butte from the northeast in 1888.
It first used a couple small passenger stations in Butte, including that of the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific. On February 1, 1914, the Great Northern formally opened the brick and concrete depot on South Arizona Street. This station served the railway’s passenger trains that connected Havre on the transcontinental line to Great Falls, Helena, and Butte. At the end of a secondary main line, the depot saw less traffic than the Northern Pacific-Union Pacific depot. In the busy 1910s, four trains per day originated or terminated at the depot. Beyond linking Butte with Great Falls, one pair of trains—the Judith Special—reached further southeast from Great Falls to Lewistown.
The decline of rail passenger service in subsequent decades reduced traffic to a single pair of trains. Great Northern’s last scheduled passenger train service was a single self-propelled rail car, nicknamed the “galloping goose.” Service to Butte ended on September 6, 1961.
Just to the south and east of the Great Northern passenger station is the switchyard that for decades was jointly operated by the Great Northern and the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific. During the decades that the BA&P used electric power, two of the yard tracks had the necessary wires overhead. At this yard, the BA&P turned over to the Great Northern cars loaded at the Anaconda smelter with copper and zinc that required finishing at the refinery at Black Eagle, across the Missouri River from Great Falls. Much of the traffic consisted of copper anodes, large cast slabs with “ears” from which the anodes were suspended on frames in specialized flat cars. The suspended anodes clacked against each other as the trains moved. This switchyard is still active, with trains carrying copper concentrates westward from Montana Resources plant on the way to the connecting railroads.
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