Brainerd grew from the ambitions of railroad entrepreneurs who, despite skeptics, formed the Northern Pacific Railroad Company to build a transcontinental line from New York to Puget Sound, Washington, and established it near the confluence of the Crow Wing and Mississippi rivers. During 1871 and 1872, settlers by the hundred came to the "City of the Pines" to work for the new railroad, followed by adventurers, gamblers, speculators, and other "undesirables" who brought a Wild West roughness to the town that would later be known as Brainerd. Other entrepreneurs arrived as well, drawn by the area's growth and visible promise of profit. In the 1880s, the great lumber industry expanded there because of the region's dense forests of Norway and white pine, and the discovery of iron ore on the Cuyuna Range north of Brainerd brought further development. The population surged and boom times followed. A paper mill opened in 1898 and quickly became one of the region's major employers. Pristine lakes teeming with fish and forests filled with game created the area's most enduring industry, tourism, which remained a major economic force more than 100 years later alongside financial service companies, high-tech firms, wood products and plastics manufacturers, publishing and mailing, health care, and specialty firms flourishing side by side. Even amid that expansion, the area retained the character captured in an 1888 article's phrase, "A Growing Town at the Edge of a Forest," and its abundant natural resources and relaxed pace of life continued to attract people seeking a balanced lifestyle free of urban stress.