|
||
|
|
|
|
Scarce promotional map advertising the lands of the Soo Line (Wisconsin Central Railway Land Grant Land) offered for sale by H.S. Funston, Land Commissioner in northeastern Wisconsin.
The Soo Line has its beginnings dating back to the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Atlantic Railway, incorporated in 1883, which was built to connect its namesake cities (in the interest of shipping grain, a staple of the region) to Sault Ste. Marie and a connection with the Canadian Pacific (in an attempt to bypass busy Chicago). The railroad was never finished as originally envisioned and required help from its subsidiary the Minneapolis & St. Croix Railway.
The MStP&A later chartered the Minneapolis & Pacific to build west from Minneapolis into the Dakotas to ship even more grain traffic east. All three railroads soon ran into financial trouble eventually being assisted by the CP, which required them to merge in the summer of 1888, to form the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie Railway, the original Soo Line. Following the merger, the Soo was for the most part a successful independent carrier and expanded throughout the rest of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its first major takeover was the original Wisconsin Central, which operated between Ashland and West Menasha, Wisconsin in the early 1900s.
![[ Karte des Nordens von America, Zur Beurtheilung der Wahrscheinlichkeit einer nord=westlichen Durchfhart, gezeichnet von G. Forster, 1791.]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/41816dm.jpg)
