The Railroad to Shakopee 1865

The Railroad to Shakopee 1865. Pathways of Shakopee History. , For many years, steamboats along the Minnesota River were the most efficient way for people and goods to reach the young city. However, in the mid-1860s, a new method of transportation arrived , the railroad. The first steam train rolled from Mendota into Shakopee along Second Avenue on November 11, 1865. Clara Hirscher Hattenberger remembered, "It was a combination of engine, passenger coach and caboose. I have forgotten the year, but it seemed to me that every person in Shakopee was down at the track to see it come in." , For 30 years, a wooden-framed depot served Shakopee and its travelers. By the fall of 1909, a gang of swarthy laborers broke ground on Shakopee's new Union Depot which opened in February 1910. It was a freight depot for the old Omaha and Milwaukee railroad lines of the early 1900s. , Passengers heading west from St. Paul to Mankato or south to New Prague stopped in Shakopee while waiting for the next train to continue their journey. The passenger train business through and around Shakopee dates to 1871. By 1952, the traveling public had turned to automobiles. Passenger service was dropped in the winter of 1955. Two years later, the Omaha was cutting back its mail lines through Shakopee by two trains a day. Motorized highway routes soon replaced the mail lines. , The last of the steam-powered locomotives stopped service in the early 1950s. Today, the Union Pacific Railroad travels through Shakopee carrying various freight. Throughout the day and night, residents can hear the rumble of the tracks, hiss of the brakes, clickity-clack of the wheels, and the dirge of the horn , "WOOooOOOH!" , Presidential Visit , President William Howard Taft spoke to a crowd outside the depot for 30 minutes on October 24, 1911 on a re-election campaign swing through Shakopee. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) steamed through town in the 1930s or 1940s but did not stop. President Harry S. Truman made a brief appearance in Shakopee in 1948. Truman greeted a mass of citizens several rows deep from a slow-moving train, but like FDR, Truman did not stop.