Great Northern Railway (U.S.)

The Great Northern Railway was an American Class I railroad founded in 1889 by James J. Hill and a group of investors including John S. Kennedy, Norman Kittson, Donald Smith and George Stephen, taking its name that year from the earlier Minneapolis and St. Cloud Railway. Headquartered in Saint Paul, Minnesota, it built and operated a transcontinental line across the northern United States, reaching from Minnesota through Montana, North Dakota, Idaho and Washington to the Pacific coast. On March 2, 1970, it merged with the Northern Pacific Railway, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad and the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway to form the Burlington Northern Railroad, which itself merged with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in 1996 to form BNSF Railway.