Butte to Whitehall

MT · Butte → Whitehall

Photo: Fishinphoto · CC BY-SA 4.0

The North Coast Limited crossed the Continental Divide here for 80 years. The rails were never pulled.

The Northern Pacific built its Butte Short Line over Homestake Pass in 1888–1889. It ran from Logan through Whitehall and Butte to Garrison, climbing to the Continental Divide at 6,329 ft on steep, curving track through the granite boulder fields east of Butte. From the summit it's a 2,000-ft drop to the Jefferson River valley at Whitehall.

For generations this was the scenic main line of the North Coast Limited, the Northern Pacific's flagship train from Chicago to Seattle. After Amtrak took over, its successor the North Coast Hiawatha kept crossing Homestake until it was cancelled in 1979.

Freight went next. The grades and curves were a bad fit for modern heavy trains, and Burlington Northern could send them over Mullan Pass near Helena instead. In 1983 BN shut down the line and embargoed the 26 miles between Whitehall and Butte. The track east of Whitehall toward Logan stayed in service. Over the pass the rails were left in place — partly because the old Forest Service lease requires the grade be restored if the track comes out, which would be very expensive.

About the train-robbery story: there's no documented robbery on Homestake Pass itself. But the North Coast Limited — the train that crossed here — was hit twice near Bearmouth, west of Butte. In October 1902 bandits killed the engineer in a failed dynamite holdup. On June 16, 1904, robbers blew open the express car safe and escaped with the loot, and were later caught. A few miles south, the Milwaukee Road crossed the same divide over Pipestone Pass from 1908 until it was abandoned in 1980.