As one of the largest landholding companies in the U.S., BNSF is the keeper of more than one million contracts, deeds, photographs and maps collected over nearly 170 years. Maps are essential to the railroad – capturing permanent property records and locations of important assets including signals, structures and property lines. In 2013, BNSF began…
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Long before the SR 99 tunnel and the downtown bus/light rail tunnel, a railroad tunnel was constructed downtown between Washington and Virginia streets. A fascinating story about the tunnel is reported by Feliks Banel – broadcaster, filmmaker and historian – on mynorthwest.com. For more than 110 years, the tunnel has safely and reliably served passenger and…
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The Spokane, Portland and Seattle (SP&S) Railway was formed by BNSF predecessor companies Northern Pacific and Great Northern to pursue real estate and steamship ventures. Twin steamships, the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific, were the flagship vessels of the passenger service provide between Oregon and California. The two ships performed their job so well,…
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Constructed in the late 1800s, the Great Northern Railway was the only transcontinental railroad built using no federal money or land donations. Over the last 100 years, the Great Northern Railway has merged with other railroads bringing us to the present name, BNSF Railway. The east-west corridor runs from Chicago to several ports in the…
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Locomotive train history has always been an important part of the history of the Pacific Northwest. Out of the nearly 2,800 Shay steam locomotives built between 1878 and 1945, only 116 still exist and less than 15% are operational. The Oregon Historical Society has been operating excursions on Shay steam locomotives since 1994. This year, BNSF…
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In 1973, 19-year-old Christene Gonzales’ mother planted the seed of going to work for the railroad as a locomotive engineer. Gonzales thought, “What the heck!” She applied, interviewed and was hired. Unbeknownst to her, Gonzales was about to become the first female locomotive engineer for the Santa Fe Railway. Over the years, she developed a…
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BNSF Everett Conductor Andrew Black participated in history Oct. 8 when the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie, Wash., held a dedication for its new Railroad Education Center. The center opens up an array of possibilities for the way the museum preserves and shares its railroad history – about people, stories, documents, artifacts and technology. It will house…
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At BNSF Railway, we’re proud our shared history with the Boeing Company helped build the Puget Sound region into what it is today. And we’re proud to be an integral part of one of the most sophisticated supply chain operations in the world – an innovative logistics chain that gets the right parts to the…
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In the late 1950s, The Dalles Dam and John Day Dam neared completion, causing water levels to rise and threatening many prehistoric rock carvings. James Lee Hansen, one of the Pacific Northwest’s premier sculptors, made stone copies of the carvings to save them from being lost in the rising Columbia River. Because of grants provided…
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Painted Journeys is a nationally touring exhibition organized by the Buffalo Bill Center of the West on view at Tacoma Art Museum through May 1, 2016. John Mix Stanley traveled thousands of miles crisscrossing the western territories in the mid-1800s, venturing as far as the kingdom of Hawaii. The prolific artist is best known for his portraits of American Indians…
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