The St. Paul and Duluth Railroad was reorganized from the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad in 1877. It was bought by the Northern Pacific Railway in 1900. Renamed the "Skally Line", it operated from Saint Paul to Duluth, Minnesota, with branches to Minneapolis, Taylors Falls, Kettle River, and Cloquet, in Minnesota, and Grantsburg and Superior in Wisconsin.
According to "The Story of Minnesota" published by the St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Press in 1964, James Root, engineer of the St. Paul and Duluth Railroad Engine No. 4, was heading to St. Paul from Duluth with 400 passengers aboard when the train arrived at Hinckley, Minnesota in the middle of the historic fire of 1894. Root rescued several people escaping from the fire and quickly reversed course racing through flames heading back north toward Duluth stopping at Skunk Lake near Sandstone so that the escapees and passengers could cool off in the water. Root suffered cuts from flying glass that came from bursting windows in the intense heat and also severe burns when the locomotive, its coal tender and other cars were damaged by the inferno.
The line was purchased by the Northern Pacific Railway (NP) which was succeeded by the Burlington Northern and then the Burlington Northern Santa Fe. Most of the line became redundant after the Burlington Northern merger, as it paralleled another line of the Great Northern Railway which also became part of the Burlington Northern. Most of the NP line was abandoned and many segments were turned into rail trails.
The disposition of segments, all within Minnesota, is as follows: