Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation operates one of the largest railroad networks in North America. The network includes more than 33,500 miles (53,900 kilometers) of track and routes in 28 states in the western, central, and southern United States, and in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Manitoba. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation, or BNSF for short, was formed in 1995 by the merger of Burlington Northern Inc. and the Santa Fe Pacific Corporation, the parent companies of two major railroads. The majority of the corporation’s revenue is generated by freight-hauling activities. BNSF has headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas.
BNSF has its origin in a number of early railroads. These railroads included the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, founded as the Aurora Branch Railroad in 1849; the Northern Pacific Railroad, founded in 1864; the Great Northern Railway, chartered in 1857 as the Minnesota & Pacific Railroad Company; the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway, founded as the Portland & Seattle Railway in 1905; and the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway Company, chartered in 1849 as the Pacific Railroad of Missouri. All of these railroads eventually became part of the Burlington Northern Railroad, one of the two major railroads involved in the 1995 merger. The other railroad, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, was chartered in 1859 as the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, and changed its name in 1985.
