The Guernsey-Wendover Cutoff was a nine-mile rail link built by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy in 1914-1915 through very rough country between Guernsey and Wendover along the North Platte. Completed as the last nine-mile gap in the Burlington system, it required a 640-foot steel truss bridge across the river and three timber-lined tunnels, making it the most expensive segment of the entire system at a cost of $2 million. The Burlington had reached Guernsey in 1900 to haul iron ore from the nearby Sunrise mine as it expanded westward in competition for western markets, with rails stretching from Chicago and Kansas City west to the Pacific and south to the Gulf of Mexico. The first train used the new route on December 4, 1915, and the line became a vital link between North Pacific’s mainline in southern Montana and the Burlington lines. Before Guernsey Reservoir was built in 1927 and Lake Guernsey State Park was developed in the 1930s, the railroad ran through this area, and today the line, now the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Company, carries low-sulfur coal from the Powder River Basin to power plants across the Midwest and eastern United States. Tunnel No. 2, the middle of the three tunnels, lay directly beneath this bridge and was removed to facilitate rail traffic, while Tunnels 1 and 2 are still in place.