William Crooks - First Locomotive in Minnesota

The postcard above shows the William Crooks locomotive when it was on display in the St. Paul Union Depot. The locomotive was on display there from 1954 until the depot closed in 1971. Since 1975 the the William Crooks has been in Duluth, Minnesota's Historic Union Depot in the Lake Superior Railroad Museum.

The photo below is from the Minnesota Historical Society Visual Resources Database. It shows The William Crooks alongside Great Northern Railway locomotive 2030, circa 1925.

The William Crooks was the first steam locomotive to run in Minnesota and is one of the few Civil War era locomotives still in existence. The locomotive was constructed in 1861 and eventually became part of the Great Northern Railway. It was named for William Crooks, Chief Mechanical Engineer of the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (Great Northern's predecessor line), and Colonel of the Sixth Regiment, MN Volunteers, in the Civil War. The engine arrived in St. Paul by Mississippi riverboat in 1861. On June 28, 1862, it made its maiden run over the first ten miles of Minnesota railroad, from St. Paul to St. Anthony (now Minneapolis).

Here is some information from the Lake Superior Railroad Museum website. More information can be found here.

Most of the early steam locomotives had cowcatchers on the front of them. This is because there were open ranges at the time, and cows and other animals wandered all over. If an animal got on the tracks and refused to move after bells were rung and whistles blown, the locomotive would use the cowcatcher to push the animal off the tracks. It might get hurt or even killed, but the cowcatcher prevented the animal from getting underneath the wheels of the train and derailing it. The headlight is a kerosene lantern, and the dome marked #1 is a sand dome. If the rails were slippery, the engineer pulled a lever and sand went down the tube and was dropped off in front of the drive wheel, providing better traction for the locomotive. A screen covers the top of the smokestack to curtail the sparks created from burning wood. These sparks might otherwise start fires along the tracks. The boiler is the long green part and was filled with water. A hot fire was built in the firebox of the locomotive cab. It heated all of the water in the boiler and turned it into steam. The steam went into the pistons and made the side rods go back and forth, which made the wheels go around. This is basically how a steam engine works. All of the extra water and fuel (in this case, wood) were kept in the tender until needed.

The William Crooks was retired from active service around the turn of the century. Its last trip under steam was to the Chicago Railroad Fair in 1948. The video shows it as "The Pioneer Train" en route to the New York World's Fair in 1939.

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