Photo Credit: Frank Jay Haynes/University of Washington Libraries
President Henry Villard of the Northern Pacific Railroad, accompanied by a distinguished party of guests, celebrated the completion of the railroad at Gold Creek, Montana Territory on September 8, 1883, where the construction work from the East and West met. General U.S. Grant, Frederick Billings, William M. Evarts, Carl Schurz, James Bryce, Sir Robert Peel, George Bruce, General Adna Anderson, George M. Hillman, Edmund L. DeLastry, and many other notables comprised the party.