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Last Spike at Feist Lake
In the 1870s, Canada needed a reliable all-Canadian transportation route between Lake Superior and the western prairie territories it acquired in 1869. After promising a rail connection to British Columbia, the federal government started to build a railway between Thunder Bay and Red River in 1875. It took seven years to complete the 600 kilometre (375 mile) line. Thousands of workers battled mosquitoes and blackflies as they cut trees, blasted granite, bridged chasms and filled in muskeg. On June 19, 1882, the last spike was driven just south of here near Feist Lake. The line was transferred to the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway, which delivered the first shipment of western grain to Thunder Bay in the fall of 1883.
Location
At the pull-off at Little Joe Lake, Highway 17, 37 km west of Vermillion Bay