1.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
2.
Lake County, Illinois
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Lake County is a county in the northeastern corner of the U. S. state of Illinois. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 703,462, originally part of McHenry County, the townships composing Lake County were carved out into a separate county in 1839. Lake County is one of the counties of the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin. It is located along the shore of Lake Michigan, according to the 2000 census, Lake County is the 31st richest county by per capita income. The lakefront communities of Lake Forest, Lake Bluff, and Highland Park are part of the affluent North Shore area, naval Station Great Lakes is located in the city of North Chicago in Lake County. It is the United States Navys Headquarters Command for training, the county, which was primarily unsettled prairie and was still home to its native Potawatomi Indians, was created by the Illinois State Legislature in 1839. At that time, Libertyville, then known as Independence Grove, was the first county seat, in 1841, however, the countys residents voted to move the county government to Little Fort, now Waukegan, where the commissioners had purchased a section of land from the state. Lake Countys first courthouse was built on part of land in 1844. The countys first courthouse was used solely for court sessions and the jail, when fire damaged the courthouse on October 19,1875, the county records were saved because they were in the adjacent building. After the fire, proposals were made to move the county seat to Highland Park, the county commissioners, however, decided to rebuild in Waukegan. The east half of the building was reconstructed at a cost of $45,000, in 1895, the first jail building was added to the government complex and a west addition was added to the courthouse in 1922. By 1938, county commissioners saw a need for additional space and this courthouse, however, was demolished in 1967 to make room for a new high-rise administration building, which was completed with the addition of the jail in 1969 and courts in 1970. The justice center, which houses the county jail, work release program, sheriffs administration offices, Lake County government services extend throughout the countys 470 square miles. The historic Half Day Inn, a tavern/restaurant, was constructed in 1843, according to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 1,368 square miles, of which 444 square miles is land and 935 square miles is water. It is the second-largest county in Illinois by total area, most of the water is in Lake Michigan. These facilities include traditional nature preserves, such as the Ryerson Conservation Area, as well as courses and historic homes. Several local environmental groups operate in Lake County, such as Conserve Lake County and Citizens for Conservation, volunteer opportunities also exist with the Lake County Forest Preserve District. The population density was 1,585.6 inhabitants per square mile, there were 260,310 housing units at an average density of 586.7 per square mile
3.
ZIP Code
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ZIP Codes are a system of postal codes used by the United States Postal Service since 1963. The term ZIP, an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan, was chosen to suggest that the travels more efficiently, and therefore more quickly. The basic format consists of five numerical digits, an extended ZIP+4 code, introduced in 1983, includes the five digits of the ZIP Code, a hyphen, and four additional digits that determine a more specific location within a given ZIP Code. The term ZIP Code was originally registered as a servicemark by the U. S. Postal Service, USPS style for ZIP is all caps and the c in code is also capitalized, although style sheets for some publications use sentence case or lowercase. The early history and context of postal codes began with postal district/zone numbers, the United States Post Office Department implemented postal zones for numerous large cities in 1943. For example, Mr. John Smith 3256 Epiphenomenal Avenue Minneapolis 16, by the early 1960s a more organized system was needed, and on July 1,1963, non-mandatory five-digit ZIP Codes were introduced nationwide. Three months later, on October 1,1963, the U. S, an earlier list in June had proposed capitalized abbreviations ranging from two to five letters. The abbreviations have remained unchanged, with one exception, according to the historian of the U. S. Robert Moon, an employee of the post office, is considered the father of the ZIP Code, he submitted his proposal in 1944 while working as a postal inspector. The post office gives credit to Moon only for the first three digits of the ZIP Code, which describe the sectional center facility or sec center, an SCF is a central mail processing facility with those three digits. The SCF sorts mail to all post offices with those first three digits in their ZIP Codes, the mail is sorted according to the final two digits of the ZIP Code and sent to the corresponding post offices in the early morning. Sectional centers do not deliver mail and are not open to the public, Mail picked up at post offices is sent to their own SCF in the afternoon, where the mail is sorted overnight. The United States Post Office used a character, which it called Mr. ZIP. He was often depicted with a such as USE ZIP CODE in the selvage of panes of stamps or on labels contained in, or the covers of. In 1983, the U. S. Postal Service introduced an expanded ZIP Code system that it called ZIP+4, often called plus-four codes, add-on codes, or add ons. But initial attempts to promote use of the new format met with public resistance. For Post Office Boxes, the rule is that each box has its own ZIP+4 code. However, there is no rule, so the ZIP+4 Code must be looked up individually for each box. It is common to use add-on code 9998 for mail addressed to the postmaster,9999 for general delivery, for a unique ZIP Code, the add-on code is typically 0001
4.
African Americans
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African Americans are an ethnic group of Americans with total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. The term may also be used to only those individuals who are descended from enslaved Africans. As a compound adjective the term is usually hyphenated as African-American, Black and African Americans constitute the third largest racial and ethnic group in the United States. Most African Americans are of West and Central African descent and are descendants of enslaved peoples within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of 73. 2–80. 9% West African, 18–24% European, according to US Census Bureau data, African immigrants generally do not self-identify as African American. The overwhelming majority of African immigrants identify instead with their own respective ethnicities, immigrants from some Caribbean, Central American and South American nations and their descendants may or may not also self-identify with the term. After the founding of the United States, black people continued to be enslaved, believed to be inferior to white people, they were treated as second-class citizens. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U. S. citizenship to whites only, in 2008, Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected President of the United States. The first African slaves arrived via Santo Domingo to the San Miguel de Gualdape colony, the ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic, the settlers and the slaves who had not escaped returned to Haiti, whence they had come. The first recorded Africans in British North America were 20 and odd negroes who came to Jamestown, as English settlers died from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers. Typically, young men or women would sign a contract of indenture in exchange for transportation to the New World, the landowner received 50 acres of land from the state for each servant purchased from a ships captain. An indentured servant would work for years without wages. The status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland was similar to slavery, servants could be bought, sold, or leased and they could be physically beaten for disobedience or running away. Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom and they raised families, married other Africans and sometimes intermarried with Native Americans or English settlers. By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown and some became wealthy by colonial standards and purchased indentured servants of their own. In 1640, the Virginia General Court recorded the earliest documentation of slavery when they sentenced John Punch. One of Dutch African arrivals, Anthony Johnson, would own one of the first black slaves, John Casor
5.
Hispanic and Latino Americans
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Hispanic Americans and Latino Americans, are Americans who are descendants of the peoples of Spain, Portugal, or the Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking countries of Latin America. More generally, it includes all persons in the United States who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino, other U. S. government agencies have slightly different definitions of the term, including Brazilians and other Portuguese-speaking groups. The Census Bureau uses the terms Hispanic and Latino interchangeably, origin can be viewed as the ancestry, nationality group, lineage, or country of birth of the person or the persons parents or ancestors before their arrival in the United States. People who identify as Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino may be of any race, as the only specifically designated category of ethnicity in the United States, Hispanics form a pan-ethnicity incorporating a diversity of inter-related cultural and linguistic heritages. Most Hispanic Americans are of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Salvadoran, Dominican, Guatemalan, the predominant origin of regional Hispanic populations varies widely in different locations across the country. Hispanic Americans are the second fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States after Asian Americans, hispanic/Latinos overall are the second-largest ethnic group in the United States, after non-Hispanic Whites. Hispanics have lived within what is now the United States continuously since the founding of St. Augustine by the Spanish in 1565, after Native Americans, Hispanics are the oldest ethnic group to inhabit much of what is today the United States. Spain colonized large areas of what is today the American Southwest and West Coast, the terms Hispanic and Latino refer to an ethnicity, people of this group may be of any race. Hispanic people may share some commonalities in their language, culture, history, according to the Smithsonian Institution, the term Latino includes peoples with Portuguese roots, such as Brazilians, as well as those of Spanish-language origin. In the United States, many Hispanics and Latinos are of both European and Native American ancestry, others are wholly or predominately of European ancestry, or wholly or predominantly of Amerindian ancestry. Many Hispanics and Latinos from the Caribbean, as well as regions of Latin America where African slavery was widespread. The difference between the terms Hispanic and Latino is confusing to some, the U. S. Census Bureau equates the two terms and defines them as referring to anyone from Spain and the Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas. The term Latino has developed a number of definitions, one definition of Latino is a Latin male in the United States. This is the oldest and the definition used in the United States. This definition encompasses Spanish speakers from both Europe and the Americas, under this definition, immigrants from Spain and immigrants from Latin America are both Latino. This definition is consistent with the 21st-century usage by the U. S. Census Bureau and OMB, a later definition of Latino is as a condensed form of the term Latino-Americano, the Spanish word for Latin-American, or someone who comes from Latin America. Under this definition a Mexican American or Puerto Rican, for example, is both a Hispanic and a Latino, a Brazilian American is also a Latino by this definition, which includes those of Portuguese-speaking origin from Latin America. An immigrant from Spain, however, would be classified as Hispanic, while the U. S. Census Bureaus definition of Hispanic is limited to Spain and Spanish-speaking Latin America, other government agencies have slightly different definitions of the term
6.
Asian Americans
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Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. The term refers to a group that includes diverse populations who have ancestral origins in East Asia, Southeast Asia, or South Asia. This includes people who indicate their race on the census as Asian or reported entries such as Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Other Asian. Asian Americans with no other ancestry comprise 4. 8% of the U. S. population, although migrants from Asia have been in parts of the contemporary United States since the 17th century, large-scale immigration did not begin until the mid-18th century. Nativist immigration laws during the 1880s-1920s excluded various Asian groups, eventually prohibiting almost all Asian immigration to the continental United States, after immigration laws were reformed during the 1940s-60s, abolishing national origins quotas, Asian immigration increased rapidly. Analyses of the 2010 census have shown that Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial or ethnic minority in the United States, starting in the first few years of the 2000 decade, Asian American earnings began exceeding all other racial groups for both men and women. For example, in 2008 Asian Americans had the highest median household income overall of any racial demographic, in 2012, Asian Americans had the highest educational attainment level and median household income of any racial demographic in the country. In 2015, Asian American men were the highest earning racial group as they earned 117% as much as white American men, once country of birth and other demographic factors are taken into account, Asian Americans are no more likely than non-Hispanic whites to live in poverty. As with other racial and ethnicity based terms, formal and common usage have changed markedly through the history of this term. Prior to the late 1960s, people of Asian ancestry were referred to as Oriental, Asiatic. Today, Asian American is the term for most formal purposes, such as government and academic research. The most commonly used definition of Asian American is the US Census Bureau definition, which all people with origins in the Far East, Southeast Asia. This is chiefly because the census definitions determine many government classifications, notably for equal opportunity programs, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, Asian person in the United States is sometimes thought of as a person of East Asian descent. In vernacular usage, Asian is often used to refer to those of East Asian descent or anyone else of Asian descent with epicanthic eyefolds. This differs from the U. S. Census definition and the Asian American Studies departments in many universities consider all those of East, before 1980, Census forms listed particular Asian ancestries as separate groups, along with white and black or negro. Asian Americans had also been classified as other, in 1977, the federal Office of Management and Budget issued a directive requiring government agencies to maintain statistics on racial groups, including on Asian or Pacific Islander. The 1980 census marked the first classification of Asians as a large group, by the 1990 census, Asian or Pacific Islander was included as an explicit category, although respondents had to select one particular ancestry as a subcategory. The 2000 census onwards separated the category into two separate ones, Asian American and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, the definition of Asian American has variations that derive from the use of the word American in different contexts
7.
Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
8.
Log cabin
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A log cabin is a dwelling constructed of logs, especially a less finished or architecturally sophisticated structure. Log cabins have an ancient history in Europe, and in America are often associated with first generation home building by settlers, construction with logs was described by Roman architect Vitruvius Pollio in his architectural treatise De Architectura. He noted that in Pontus, dwellings were constructed by laying logs horizontally overtop of each other and filling in the gaps with chips, historically log cabin construction has its roots in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. Although their origin is uncertain, the first log structures were probably being built in Northern Europe by the Bronze Age. C. A. Weslager describes Europeans as having. accomplished in building several forms of log housing, having different methods of corner timbering, Log saunas or bathhouses of this type are still found in rural Finland. By stacking tree trunks one on top of another and overlapping the logs at the corners and they developed interlocking corners by notching the logs at the ends, resulting in strong structures that were easier to make weather-tight by inserting moss or other soft material into the joints. As the original coniferous forest extended over the coldest parts of the world, the insulating properties of the solid wood were a great advantage over a timber frame construction covered with animal skins, felt, boards or shingles. Over the decades, increasingly complex joints were developed to ensure more weather tight joints between the logs, but the profiles were still based on the round log. It was also common to replace individual logs damaged by dry rot as necessary, the Wood Museum in Trondheim, Norway, displays fourteen different traditional profiles, but a basic form of log construction was used all over North Europe and Asia and later imported to America. Log construction was especially suited to Scandinavia, where straight, tall tree trunks are readily available, with suitable tools, a log cabin can be erected from scratch in days by a family. As no chemical reaction is involved, such as hardening of mortar, many older towns in Northern Scandinavia have been built exclusively out of log houses, which have been decorated by board paneling and wood cuttings. Today, construction of log cabins as leisure homes is a fully developed industry in Finland. Modern log cabins often feature fiberglass insulation and are sold as prefabricated kits machined in a factory, Log cabins are mostly constructed without the use of nails and thus derive their stability from simple stacking, with only a few dowel joints for reinforcement. This is because a log cabin tends to compress slightly as it settles, nails would soon be out of alignment and torn out. In the present-day United States, settlers may have first constructed log cabins by 1638, historians believe that the first log cabins built in North America were in the Swedish colony of Nya Sverige in the Delaware River and Brandywine River valleys. Many of its colonists were actually Forest Finns, because Finland was a part of Sweden at that time. New Sweden only briefly existed before it became the Dutch colony of New Netherland, the Swedish-Finnish colonists quick and easy construction techniques not only remained, but spread. Later German and Ukrainian immigrants also used this technique, the Scots and Scots-Irish had no tradition of building with logs, but they quickly adopted the method
9.
John D. Rockefeller
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John Davison Rockefeller Sr. was an American oil industry business magnate and philanthropist. He is widely considered the wealthiest American of all time, born into a large family in upstate New York, he was shaped by his con man father and religious mother. His family moved several times before settling in Cleveland, Ohio. Rockefeller became an assistant bookkeeper at the age of 16, and went into a partnership with Maurice B. Clark. After buying them out, he and his brother William founded Rockefeller & Andrews with Samuel Andrews, instead of drilling for oil, he concentrated on refining. In 1867, Henry Flagler entered the partnership, the Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler company grew by incorporating local refineries. As kerosene and gasoline grew in importance, Rockefellers wealth soared and he became the richest person in the country, Oil was used throughout the country as a light source until the introduction of electricity and as a fuel after the invention of the automobile. Furthermore, Rockefeller gained enormous influence over the industry, which transported his oil around the country. Standard Oil was the first great business trust in the United States, Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry, and along with other key contemporary industrialists such as steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, defined the structure of modern philanthropy. His peak net worth was estimated at $336 billion in 1913, Rockefeller spent the last 40 years of his life in retirement at his estate in Westchester County, New York. His foundations pioneered the development of research and were instrumental in the eradication of hookworm. Rockefeller was also the founder of both the University of Chicago and Rockefeller University and funded the establishment of Central Philippine University in the Philippines and he was a devout Northern Baptist, and supported many church-based institutions. Rockefeller adhered to total abstinence from alcohol and tobacco throughout his life and he was a faithful congregant of the Erie Street Baptist Mission Church, where he taught Sunday school, and served as a trustee, clerk, and occasional janitor. Religion was a force throughout his life, and Rockefeller believed it to be the source of his success. Rockefeller was the second of six children and eldest son born in Richford, New York, to con artist William Avery Bill Rockefeller and his siblings were Lucy, William Jr. Mary, and twins Franklin and Frances. His father was of English and German descent while his mother was of Scots-Irish descent, Bill was first a lumberman and then a traveling salesman who identified himself as a botanic physician and sold elixirs. The locals referred to the mysterious but fun-loving man as Big Bill and he was a sworn foe of conventional morality who had opted for a vagabond existence and who returned to his family infrequently. Throughout his life, Bill was notorious for shady schemes, in between the births of Lucy and John, Bill and his mistress/housekeeper Nancy Brown had a daughter named Clorinda who died young
10.
Soo Line Railroad
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The Soo Line Railroad is the primary United States railroad subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway, controlled through the Soo Line Corporation, and one of seven U. S. Although it is named for the Minneapolis, St. Paul and it is also the successor to other Class I railroads, including the Minneapolis, Northfield and Southern Railway and Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. On the other hand, an amount of mileage was spun off in 1987 to Wisconsin Central Ltd. now part of the Canadian National Railway. S. Surface Transportation Board groups all CPs U. S. subsidiaries under the Soo Line name for reporting purposes, the companys main line begins at Portal, North Dakota on the Canada–US border, and extends southeast along former MStP&SSM trackage to the Twin Cities. Ex-Milwaukee Road trackage takes the Soo Line from the Twin Cities to Chicago via Milwaukee. Major branches include a connection from the border at Noyes to Glenwood, Minnesota and, until it was sold to the Indiana Rail Road in 1983, through trackage rights over the BNSF Railway, the Soo Line also serves Duluth from the Twin Cities. At the end of 1970, the Soo Line operated 4693 miles of road on 6104 miles of track, when CP consolidated several subsidiaries on January 1,1961, it used this company to merge the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad and Wisconsin Central Railroad into, and renamed it to the present name, the Soo Line gained control of the Minneapolis, Northfield and Southern Railway, a Twin Cities-area short line, in June 1982. Passenger service was eliminated by the 1961 merger, but several trains remained for a few more years. It was discontinued in December 1963, and the western Canada cars were handled on the Winnipeger for two summers before they too were pulled. The Soo Lines last passenger train was the Copper Country Limited and this Chicago-Champion-Calumet service was discontinued May 8,1968. In addition there were mixed trains, with additional ones created to enable the discontinuance of the Saint Paul to Portal passenger train. Some mixed train services gained notoriety because passengers were conveyed in one direction only, in 1984, CP incorporated the Soo Line Corporation in Minnesota as a holding company, exchanging stock in December to give the Soo Line Corporation total control over the railroad. This company and the MN&S were both merged into the Soo Line Railroad effective January 1,1986. Unable to implement its proposed rule changes, the Soo Line sold the approximately 2, 000-mile LSTD to a new regional railroad. In 1990, CP gained full control of the Soo Line Corporation, in the 2000s, the Soo line was consolidated into CP. Only few Soo locomotives remain in the old paint scheme, most have been repainted into CP or scrapped. The Presidents of the Soo Line Railroad were, Leonard H. Murray, previously President of the Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic Railroad and graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School
United States
Mundelein, Illinois
