Local line connected Fargo to the Twin Cities

By Tom Hintgen

Otter Tail County Correspondent

Many significant events took place in 1882 when the east-west Northern Pacific Railroad tracks went through central Otter Tail County, part of the route from Wadena to Henning, Battle Lake, Underwood, Fergus Falls and points westward to Breckenridge-Wahpeton and all the way to Oakes, North Dakota.

One of the big events was construction of a Northern Pacific wooden railroad bridge just west of downtown Fergus Falls, near today’s Outstate Brewing establishment. This took place in 1882, three years after the Great Northern rail line ran through Fergus Falls for the first time. That line was part of the rail route from the Twin Cities to Fargo.

Otter Tail County residents remember the Galloping Goose that was a short train which went east and west through Otter Tail County during the 1950s and 1960s. Other short trains in the Upper Midwest also were known by the name Galloping Goose.

A person could board the train in Underwood, travel east to towns such as Battle Lake and Henning to spend the night with a relative, and return home by train the next day. Their accounts of this short journey came under the heading “Personal and Social News” in the Fergus Falls Daily Journal. 

Galloping Goose short trains also carried mail, freight and farm goods along routes in the Upper Midwest.

Today the old Northern Pacific tracks in Otter Tail County are pretty much gone. One exception is railway tracks from Fergus Falls westward to Foxhome, east of Breckenridge, for trains to arrive at grain elevators.

The late Bob Lind of the Fargo Forum wrote about the Galloping Goose after interviewing Kenneth Skjegstad of Moorhead, a native of Henning.

“My hometown of Henning was developed along the Northern Pacific Railroad after the line was built in 1882,” said Skjegstad who later died in 2022. “Our home was across the street from the rail line. The comings and goings of the Goose and the local freight trains were a familiar part of life as we were growing up.”

He said the train also carried the mail. In late afternoons, Douglas Avenue, the main street in Henning, was busy with people waiting to pick up their mail.

Skjegstad made a round trip to Fergus Falls and back to Henning one day in 1948. He said it was always a pleasant and somewhat scenic ride passing farms, lakes, woods and small towns.

The Galloping Goose service on this line was discontinued in the 1960s. The N.P. abandoned most of the route in the 1970s.