In 1860 river transportation had begun on the upper Missouri, opening a vast new region to settlement. During this period at least fifty cargoes were being discharged yearly at Fort Benton in Montana, while it required a fleet of some thirty or more vessels to transport troops and carry supplies to the various posts, forts, and Indian agencies in the Missouri basin. The "Crossing on the Missouri" became a stirring steamboat port, attracting many rivermen and wood choppers. The latter served an industry of extensive proportions, since wood supplied all fuel needs for boats on the river and for the military posts and agencies.
The flooding of the flats near Burleightown each spring threatened danger for the railroad grade, however, and this is thought to have been the ostensible reason for changing the route in 1873; actually, the change was probably made to keep land grabbers from obtaining control of the point at which the road would cross the river. A new grade was built about one mile north, running past Camp Greeley. The Lake Superior and Puget Sound Company, a town site location company auxiliary to the Northern Pacific, was then able to locate another city site which was named Edwinton for Edwin F. Johnson, Northern Pacific chief engineer, but was generally known as "The Crossing." When the Burleightown grade was left unused the town was abandoned and the inhabitants moved to Edwinton. In 1873 the name Bismarck was chosen, but the first title of the town persisted. When Mrs. Linda Slaughter became postmistress in 1874 she found it necessary to point out to the Post Office Department in Washington that mail should be addressed to "Bismarck, D. T." rather than to "The Crossing, Northern Pacific Railroad on the Missouri River, D. T."
Rails were laid into Bismarck on June 4, 1873, and it remained the terminus of the Northern Pacific until 1879. With the coming of the railroad the town became the head of navigation on the Missouri. When river traffic closed in the fall because of low water, no attempt was made to operate the Northern Pacific west of Fargo until the following spring, as the company did not have snow-fighting equipment with which to keep the road open during the winter months. Merchants had to stock up in the fall with enough goods to last until spring. Mail came once a week via a Government carrier from Fargo to Fort Abraham Lincoln. Enterprising persons sometimes came from Minnesota with loads of dressed poultry and hogs for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The trip from Fargo to Bismarck took about six days by wagon.
In early days the young town combined the advantages of a river steamboat port and a western railway terminus. A frontier town, the life of its residents was necessarily rugged. A story is told of the young son of a newspaper editor, who questioned a stranger about his family and learned that the father of the visiting gentleman had died. The youngster, familiar with the columns of his own father's paper, said, "Got shot, did he?" The stranger replied that he had not. "Drank too much whiskey?" Again the visitor replied in the negative. "Well, he can't be dead then," the boy triumphantly exclaimed, "'cause that's the only way men die in Bismarck!" There were always the few, however, who made an effort to preserve the social graces. At the first party given in Bismarck, honoring Dr. and Mrs. Slaughter on their fourth wedding anniversary, dancing was part of the entertainment, and the evening ended with refreshments of champagne and buffalo tongue sandwiches.
The first train arrived in Bismarck June 5, 1873. Part of its cargo consisted of printing presses for the Bismarck Tribune, which was first issued July 11, 1873, and continues publication as North Dakota's oldest newspaper. The Tribune's greatest scoop was scored in 1876 when it gave the world the story of the Custer massacre at the Little Big Horn in Montana. Mark Kellogg, reporter for the Tribune and New York Herald, was killed in the battle, but more than a column of notes on the battle was found in a buckskin pouch on his body. When Grant Marsh's steamer Far West brought Reno's wounded and the first news of the disaster, Col. C. A. Lounsberry, founder-editor of the Tribune, obtained the story, wiring it to the Herald at a reputed cost of $3,000 for 24 hours use of the telegraph wires.
Bismarck felt the loss of Custer's command keenly, for he and his Seventh Cavalry officers from Fort Abraham Lincoln had figured prominently in the social life of the city.
The Bismarck Sun, another early newspaper, had a prominent part in the exposure of Indian and military post corruption which led to the impeachment of Secretary of War William W. Belknap in 1876. James A. Emmons, publisher of the paper, issued a handbill entitled Pirates of the Missouri which alleged that appointments as traders at military and Indian posts were being bought from the Secretary of War. The New York Herald sent out a reporter, who obtained a position at Fort Berthold Indian Agency, incognito, and succeeded in exposing the dishonesty prevalent at almost all of the Missouri River posts. The reporter barely escaped with his life when his identity was discovered; but he returned the next year and succeeded in completing his investigation. Belknap was impeached on a charge of bribery, and resigned, but was later acquitted. The episode caused a great furore throughout the country, but particularly in Bismarck.
Gold was discovered in the Black Hills in 1874, and Bismarck experienced its first boom. A regular stagecoach and freight line was maintained to Deadwood, S. Dak. It was more than 200 air line miles cross country, with no towns between. Stations were established every 20 miles and all freight was hauled into the Black Hills by wagon, 10 or 12 yoke of "wild Montana cattle" being used to pull trains of two or three wagonloads of freight. Gold seekers flocked to Bismarck, where they outfitted their supply trains before departing for the gold fields. The Bismarck Tribune of October 25, 1879, reported:
"There are no rooms available at the hotels in Bismarck tonight as there are many transients in town bound for the Hills. Our freight and passenger business to the gold fields has been very heavy during the past ten days, amounting to 300,000 pounds of freight and seventy passengers. There were also two carloads of horses shipped in for the stage coaches. There are at present two and sometimes three stages a day."