Harlowton: Where the Electric Railroad Began

Harlowton is a small town in Wheatland County named for Richard Harlow, president of the Montana Railroad that first reached here in eighteen ninety-nine. But what made Harlowton famous among railroad engineers was what happened in nineteen sixteen: the Milwaukee Road made it the eastern endpoint of the longest electrified stretch of railroad in the United States, running four hundred forty miles west to Avery, Idaho. Three thousand volts of direct current, delivered through copper overhead wire powered by Missouri River hydroelectric dams, drove the locomotives over the Rocky Mountains.

The electric era lasted until June fifteenth, nineteen seventy-four, when engineer Art Morang brought the last electric locomotive to rest on the Harlowton roundhouse track and shut it down. The Milwaukee Road itself was abandoned just a few years later.