The railroad

1316 exists because the Northern Pacific put a depot and an addition a mile and a half out of 1883 Helena and the wholesalers followed the tracks.

The line

• Charter / land grant: Northern Pacific Railroad Company, Act of July 2, 1864 (13 Stat. 365) — odd-numbered sections in the primary limits. See 02_PATENT.md.
• Helena arrival: 13 June 1883 (city history; NRHP Depot District form).
• The street in front of the depot: graded by the City in 1883 in anticipation; brick paving 1915; trolley tracks still in the listed brick street (NRHP form).
• Northern Pacific Addition: lots sold by NP trustees (George Gumming and John Bullitt named on the nomination) as soon as the unused depot-adjacent lots could be turned. Helena Weekly Herald, January 1884, reported “a great deal of capital” spent in the Addition — Elite Saloon, Grand Pacific Hotel, Denver Hotel, Kirkendall’s warehouse, etc. (NRHP form, citing the Herald).
• 1887: Northwest Magazine — “A population has sprung up around the Northern Pacific station.”
• Successor operating railroad on these tracks today: BNSF. Diane’s application says they had “begun correspondence with the gentleman in charge of 1316 Bozeman St. property.” Reply not in this packet. Do not invent it.

This block

Legal: Northern Pacific Addition, Block 25, Lots 1–4, plus 35 feet of closed Cooke Street, Section 29. That is depot-addition land, not Last Chance Gulch commercial core.

The 1935 papers call the area “the warehouse district at the Northern Pacific depot” and put Nash-Finch and A. M. Holter in it (Independent, 12 Nov 1935). Christie unloaded whisky from a freight car at the liquor house west of the depot (Independent, 20 Oct 1935). The NP yards themselves: every brick building twisted, half a huge chimney down, shops wrecked (Independent, 20 Oct 1935, C. A. Mattmiller, roundhouse foreman).

Spur onto this warehouse: VERIFIED on the 1884 Sanborn. Sheet 9 draws a PLATFORM the length of the Kleinschmidt stone warehouse on Block 25 and a SIDE TRACK between the platform and the N. P. R. R. tracks (03_SANBORN.md). Whether that exact siding still existed in 1930 / still shows as a scar today is the 1930-sheet + ground check. Do not invent a BNSF reply — Diane’s application only says correspondence had begun.

Great Northern / the other yard

The 1936 State Liquor Warehouse was built on the Great Northern yard / Front & Lyndale (helenahistory.org). That is the replacement of the Bozeman Street liquor house, not of 1316. Two railroads, two yards, one Sixth Ward. Do not put 1316 on the GN Front Street plant.

What the board can use

This is a railroad warehouse. It is on the NP Addition. The 1884 map already gives it a Northern Pacific side track at the loading platform. The 1935 shock that wrecked the depot district wrecked its office and made it pull a permit to rebuild its stone end walls. That is the railroad story.