The Montana Central: Copper, Coal and the Empire Builder

By Bill & Jan Taylor.

Canadian born James Jerome Hill, with his associates, purchased the Saint Paul and Pacific Railroad and reorganized it as the Saint Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway in 1879. The Manitoba was a successful regional grain carrier.

In 1884, Hill's friend Paris Gibson, founding father of Great Falls, invited him to visit Montana. While there, he toured the Rocky Mountain front between Great Falls and Butte looking for investment opportunities and future traffic for the Manitoba, predecessor to the Great Northern Railway, which was in the process of building west in Minnesota. Hill bought mining property, silver options near Rimini, and invested in Gibson's Great Falls Town site Company. He met with Marcus Daley, Butte's future copper baron, and Charles Broadwater, Helena banker and railroad promoter. Hill's visit would have far reaching consequences for him, for Daley, for Butte, for the Manitoba and the Great Northern, and the territory's development.

This is the story of the construction and the early operations of the Montana Central Railway between Great Falls and Butte, which was to become an integral part of Hill's Railroad Empire.

Paperback, 170 pages