The Green Bay & Lake Pepin Railway was charted in April 1866 to build a railroad from the waters of Green Bay to the Mississippi River. Several years passed as the railroad tried to arrange the financial backing for construction. The first shovels of dirt were turned in 1869 and rails were finally placed in 1871.

This 1867 panorama view looks south from the harbor. It shows how Green Bay looked just prior to the start of the railroad's construction. The city of Green Bay is on the east bank of the Fox River (center), and the smaller town of Fort Howard is on the west side (right). The two cities were merged in 1893.

Enlargements:

Dousman & Elmore elevator

Train on C&NW tracks

The GB&LP began on the west bank of the Fox River between the two backwater sloughs which can be seen in the upper right hand corner of the picture. By the late early 1900s the land along the river had become W.W. Cargill's coal dock and the sloughs had been filled in when Norwood Yard was built.

In the foreground is Dousman & Elmore's 300,000-bushel grain elevator which was built in 1862. David Kelly, president of the GB&LP, purchased Dousman's portion of the business in 1869 and the elevator became a destination for much of the Green Bay Route's eastbound traffic in the early years of the railroad. This is near the location where the Kewaunee, Green Bay & Western eventually built a bridge across the Fox River in 1895 to serve the Hoberg Paper Company (later Charmin Paper in the 1950s, finally Procter and Gamble).  If you look closely you can see a train approaching the grain elevator on the Chicago & North Western tracks.