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Abstract
In reading this book you will undoubtedly discover that a history of North Dakota transportation is really a history of the state itself. Whereas states along the eastern seaboard had been settled for 200 years before the whistle of a steamboat or locomotive was heard, rails stretched across Dakota Territory before there was any significant white pioneer settlement. Transportation facilities were built long before there were any towns to serve. The development of agriculture was an immediate necessity if railroads were to survive. The iron horse and the traction engine were partners in the cultivation of the prairies, and although agriculture and transportation were, and are often adversaries, this close and highly interdependent relationship has continued to the present day.
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