North Dakota’s only completed railroad tunnel lies about 300 feet from the east end of the Fairview Lift Bridge and is locally known as the Cartwright Tunnel, named for the town of Cartwright about 1 1/2 miles to the east. Under a general contract awarded to Guthrie-Riley and Company in 1912, a tunnel was to be driven through the uplands east of the Yellowstone River; because construction would take at least a year, the route was bypassed while grading and rail work were completed on either side. Much of the construction material was stored at Williston, loaded onto barges, floated 25 miles downstream, and unloaded at a temporary rail line at the mouth of Wild Cow Creek, while locomotives, Panama-Canal-type steam shovels, rail, ties, pilings, and men and mules were moved around the blockage by the “Guthrie Navy” and the “Wild Cow Railroad.” A second railroad tunnel was begun at Devils Bend on the Little Missouri, but although excavation and timbering started in February 1913, all work there was suspended on November 24, 1913. Work on the Yellowstone, or Cartwright, tunnel began in early December 1912; excavation was finished by June 5, 1913, interior timbering by October 2, 1913, and rails were laid through the tunnel 28 days later. Carlson, Chidahl and Company dug the tunnel mostly by hand labor, while the approaches were built with horse-drawn scrapers and blasting powder; about 60 men were at work by January 9, 1913, and by June 85 feet per day were being excavated in double shifts of twelve hours each. The timber tunnel is 1,456 feet long, 22 feet wide, and 24 feet high on a three-degree curve, with multiple layers of heavy milled timbering in board-and-batten fashion, a five-segment arch roof rising from 12-inch-by-12-inch wall timbers on 24-inch centers, closely spaced backing lumber to seal out earth, floor buttressing timbers, and east and west portals that project slightly from the hillside with retaining walls of cribbed heavy milled lumber supported by diagonal wood beams. Excavation removed 92,000 cubic yards of earth, including 12,012 from the tunnel itself and 80,000 from the cuts at both ends, and the tunnel remained in continuous use until June 5, 1986, when the last train ran to Watford City.