NPRR train hauled farm equipment to the bonanza farms in the Red River Valley in the 1870s. This train is heavily loaded with horse-drawn threshers and steam engines. Three men sit on the cow-catcher; the engineer and the firemen pose by the engine room. One man sits atop one of the threshers and two men stand near the caboose. The train appears to be hauling a heavy load of 9 engines and 10 threshers. The Northern Pacific Railroad was chartered as a federally financed transcontinental railroad. It built across northern Dakota Territory from 1872 to 1883 and then completed its tracks to Seattle. The rails brought food, building supplies, passengers, farm equipment, and mail to the territory and carried passengers, livestock, and crops such as wheat and cream to processing plants in other states. The railroad received 20 sections of land per mile of track from the public domain.
