The Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad was the first railroad to cross Missouri starting in Hannibal in the northeast and
going to St. Joseph, Missouri, in the northwest. It is most famous for delivering the first letter to the Pony Express
on April 3, 1860, from a railway post office car pulled behind locomotive Missouri.
The line connected the second and third largest cities in the state of Missouri prior to the American Civil War.
The stage route that it paralleled previously been called the "Hound Dog Trail."
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 with 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 started westward from Hannibal and ran through the Missouri cities of Palmyra, Monroe City, Shelbina, Clarence,
Anabel, Macon, Bevier, Callao, New Cambria, Bucklin, Brookfield, Laclede, Meadville, Wheeling, Chillicothe, Mooresville,
Breckenridge, Nettleton, Hamilton, Kidder, Cameron, Osborn, Stewartsville, Hemple, Easton, before arriving in St. Joseph.
The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad had used the railroad for through traffic to Chicago almost from the start and
in 1883 it formally acquired it. The connection by rail between Hannibal and St. Joseph remained in place for about 125 years.
On March 2, 1970, the railroad became the property of Burlington Northern after the C B & Q merged with 3 other railroads
to form the new railroad company. However during the mid-1980s, the railroad discontinued service from Brookfield
westward to St. Joseph. Today, a four mile stretch of track between Brookfield and Laclede remain in place and is primarily
used for surplus railroad cars along what is now the BNSF Railway which instead of running west to St. Joseph now
runs southwest toward Kansas City. The tracks from Laclede westward to St. Joseph are no longer in place, while the
tracks from Brookfield eastward toward the Mississippi River are still in use today by the BNSF.
Terminals in white are locations where R E Jacobs worked for the C B & Q
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