Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad
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The Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad was the first railroad to cross Missouri starting in Hannibal, Missouri in the northeast and going to St. Joseph, Missouri in the northwest. It is most famous for its delivering the first letter to the Pony Express on April 3, 1860 via the locomotive Missouri.
The 1,371-foot Hannibal Bridge over the Missouri River in downtown Kansas City, Missouri was part of its network It was the first rail bridge across the Missouri River when it opened July 3, 1869 and established Kansas City rather than Leavenworth, Kansas as the biggest city in the region. That bridge was replaced in 1917 and replaced with a dual car and train bridge. The car portion was replaced by the neighboring West Broadway Bridge in 1956. It coninutes rail use.
The railroad also created the first railway post office for sorting mail on the train enroute.
Eventually it became part of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad.
Construction on the railroad (which originally started during an 1846 meeting at the Hannibal office of John H. Clemens, father of Mark Twain) began in 1851 from both cities. Bonds from counties along the route along the donation of 600,000 acres in land voted by Congress paid for construction. The lines met in Chillicothe, Missouri on February 13, 1859.
The line went from Hannibal through Palmyra, Shelbyville, Bloomington, Linneus, Chillicothe and Gallatin before arriving in St. Joseph.
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