A Short History of Lester and Stampede Pass Lester's and
Stampede Pass' modern history begins with the Northern Pacific
Railroad, chartered under President Lincoln as the second of the
great transcontinental railroads. As a land-grant railroad, the
NP received title to millions of acres of land along its route
in return for constructing its line into what was at that time a
vast and still unsettled land. This land could then be sold to
raise money to finance the construction. Today, most of the
large cities between Puget Sound and Saint Paul lie along the
route of the former NP. More than one found itself named after
an NP employee (Billings and Rapleje, Montana, Kendrick, Idaho
and Lester, Washington for example). Unfortunately the NP seemed
to be running on borrowed time from the start, having had to
weather not only ice bridges across the Missouri River in the
earliest day's of its construction, but the financial scandals
of Jay Cooke, its main financier and promoter as well. Cooke &
Company's closing brou