Origins of Names of Stations and Townsites from Northern Pacific Railway Corporate Records

I haven't yet been able to return to the Mansfield Library in Missoula, but a helpful employee in Archives and Special Collections saved me a trip. She took a look through the Northern Pacific Railway Company records I mentioned in a previous post and reported that she did not find any references to Wallace, Blossburg, Clinton, or McQuarrie within. She referred me to the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS), which was next on my list anyway.

MNHS will digitize records in their collection upon request for a small fee, so last month I ordered the scan of two folders listed in their finding aid as "Origins of names of stations and townsites." My order was delivered digitally today and I am going to share with you what I found.

First, an attribution: Most of the pages appear to be part of a typewritten document titled:

Northern Pacific Railway

The Origin and Historic Significance of the Names of Towns and Stations Located on the Lines of the Railway

A Record Compiled by

John Mickelsen

Engineering Dept. Northern Pacific Ry.

Handwritten on the title page is the year "1942" and the note, "Since being completed in 1942, 200 revisions or additions have been added hereto 1943 to 1950. J.M."

Sections have been edited by hand and by replacing sections with strips of paper with replacement text typed on them. Where possible, MNHS staff has scanned both the edited text and the text underneath.

All of the typed pages are numbered and a few pages that might have held some interesting information are missing. The note from MNHS indicates that the pages "either went missing or were removed, likely before the Minnesota Historical Society received the collection."

There are still plenty of fun things to share. The first complete section detailed "Main line stations as of dates when the railway was constructed or nearly so, also as of 1890, and as at present. Shows the year in which the station was established, and name changes where made." I have included the stations between Garrison and Missoula below. The first column is at construction, the second column is as of 1890, and the third column is as of 1937.

As you can see, Wallace is listed as one of the original stations, and it was renamed Clinton in 1889. Also note "Mc Quarry" [sic.], established in 1908.

The next section is titled, "Changes in Names of Stations on N.P.RY." Here you can see that Wallace was renamed Clinton on November 24, 1889, which is three days before the name change was announced in the Anaconda Standard (as I shared previously). But while the change announced in the newspaper stated that the name was changing from Blossburg to Clinton, Mickelsen's document does not corroborate that. 

However, the renaming of Mullan to Blossburg is noted as occurring on the same date:

Some of the name changes have notes in the last column, but no additional context is provided for Clinton or Blossburg in this section.

About 95% of the document is a place-name directory not unlike other place-name books and theses I have referred to in this blog. Here is what Mickelsen writes about Clinton:

I've mentioned Baker's Station in the past, and I am most of the way through writing a lengthy post about Baker's Station that I hope to be able to share with you soon so I won't say too much about this now, other than it is increasingly apparent that before the railroad came through, Baker's Station was a geographical reference point for this area.

I was somewhat surprised to read that a spur track named Wallace was built here. It would make sense, as the Wallace mining camp was apparently two miles uphill from the main line, but this is the first mention of a spur line at Wallace that I have encountered.

It was good to see my theory about Wallace, Idaho being the reason for the name change to Clinton corroborated, but I was disappointed to read that the origin of the name Clinton "is not definitely known." I thought that company records from NPRR would be the original and definitive source, but it appears that Mickelsen was using sources outside the railroad for his information, including the Missoula Chamber of Commerce!

What I found most interesting in these records, partly because I haven't spent any time or energy researching it, and partly because it appears to confirm my theory, is what Mickelsen wrote about McQuarrie:

Wallace, Montana does not have an entry in this section, but Wallace, Idaho does.

Finally, while I have found nothing in this document that indicates that Clinton was ever called Blossburg, I thought I would share the Blossburg entry with you:

MNHS has one other folder that may include some relevant information. It is labeled as "History of names of cities and towns on the Northern Pacific system." I placed an order for it to be scanned earlier this week. I doubt that it will yield any new information, but I thought it was worth a look. I'll provide an update if there is anything notable in those scans.

1/21/2024 Update: I received the additional scans this past week. They did not reveal any new information about the stations of interest to me, so I didn't think it was worth writing a standalone post about it. The scanned folder mostly consisted of notes and correspondence with John Mickelsen about his project.