Great Northern Railway $1000 bond 1967 (Minnesota)

Famous RR. Nice vignette of the line's famous modern locomotives. $1000 denomination. Vertical format. Red border. Issued and cancelled. Dated 1967 in the text. Light folds from storage. Measuring approximately 9.5 x 13.5 inches. 

The Great Northern Railway (GN) was a major U.S. transcontinental railroad, built by James J. Hill in the late 1800s, running from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Seattle, Washington, known as "The Route of the Empire Builder" and famous for crossing Glacier National Park. It was the only U.S. transcontinental line built without direct federal land grants and became part of Burlington Northern in 1970.

The Great Northern Railway was created in September 1889 from several predecessor railroads in Minnesota and eventually stretched from Lake Superior at Duluth and Minneapolis/St. Paul west through North Dakota, Montana and Northern Idaho to Washington State at Everett and Seattle. Headquarters for the line were located in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The GN, on February 1, 1890, took over properties of the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway Company and when 1890 ended was operating 3,260 miles. The Minneapolis & St. Cloud charter, issued in 1856, had been purchased by the Hill group in 1881. Construction of the Pacific Coast extension westward from near Havre, Mont. began in 1890. The final spike was driven near Scenic, Wash., on January 6, 1893, completing the transcontinental project. By midsummer of 1893 Seattle and the East were linked by regular service. Mileage exceeded 5,000 by 1901. An outlet to and from Chicago was needed. To provide this, Great Northern and the Northern Pacific Railway Company jointly acquired control of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad in 1901.

An easier crossing of the Cascade mountains in Western Washington was completed in 1929. This included construction of the Cascade tunnel, 7.79 miles in length and longest railway tunnel today in the Western Hemisphere.

On March 2, 1970, the Great Northern, together with the Northern Pacific Railway, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad and the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway, merged to form the Burlington Northern Railroad. The BN operated until 1996 when it merged with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway to form the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway.

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