[1] In 1897, the Escanaba River Company built a seven-mile (11 km) railroad from Wells, Michigan, to tap a large hardwood timber stand at LaFave’s Hill.

Work began in 1898 to extend the track 31 miles (50 km) from Wells northwest to Watson[4] and was completed in 1899.

[8][9] Other branch lines were built by the E&LS to get out the remote timber stands: Ralph, Turner (1911–1912), Mashek, and Hendricks (1915).

[15] Additionally, with the Milwaukee Road going bankrupt in 1977, it planned to abandon its trackage in Michigan, consisting largely of a route between Ontonagon and Green Bay, Wisconsin.

[16] This plan would break the E&LS's connections at Channing, as well as end rail service to the shippers on the Milwaukee Road lines.

[16] The E&LS was able to reach an agreement with Milwaukee Road's bankruptcy court to take control of the Ontonagon route, as well as additional trackage south.

[16] The C&NW and Milwaukee Road had previously shared service to the Groveland Mine under a decades-long agreement between the two, called the Menominee Range Iron Ore Pool.

[17][18] By 1979, the mine impacted 31,000 of the 50,000 cars moved over the Milwaukee Road's tracks in the area, a level of traffic so high that Larkin publicly stated that the E&LS would not make a profit without it.

[19][20] On March 10, 1980, the E&LS formally bought the ex-Milwaukee Road between Ontonagon through Channing south to Iron Mountain.

[21] It also obtained a lease-to-own agreement of the tracks south from Iron Mountain to Green Bay; this section was purchased in 1982.

[22][23] Upon purchase, the E&LS immediately began rebuilding its new trackage, which had been neglected by the Milwaukee Road in the years leading up to its bankruptcy.

[21] In April 1983 the E&LS RR and the Northeast Wisconsin Railroad Commission signed an agreement to rehabilitate 50 miles (80 km) of track between Green Bay and Crivitz.

[25] In November 1981, the E&LS bought additional trackage, this time a branch line from Channing north to Republic.

[26] This connection was the result of a construction agreement between the E&LS and the C&NW that was executed on November 27, 1985, which provided joint access to the Howard Industrial Park.

[27] Two of the contracts executed then allowed tenants of Howard Industrial Park a choice of competing railroads for shipping service.

The E&LS mainline was stubbed off in September 2007, removing the track from Bond Street to the Oakland Avenue Yard in Green Bay.

[21] The following year (1992), the E&LS mainline from Channing to Wells was taken out of service, with access to Escanaba retained via a new trackage rights agreement with the Wisconsin Central Railroad (now Canadian National Railroad), under which the E&LS was granted access their main line from Pembine, Wisconsin, to North Escanaba.

[21] On April 20, 1995, E&LS bought a short branch line between Stiles Junction, Wisconsin, just north of Green Bay, to Oconto Falls from the C&NW.

E&LS handed off the North Woods Explorer[34] train to the Soo Line at Pembine, who then took it to Sault Ste.

[36] The Shippers Special Train usually runs late spring-early summer from Pembine south to Howard and then back north to Channing.

[44] After acquiring the Milwaukee Road line from Green Bay to Ontonagon, the E&LS needed more power to run their trains.

The railroads and leasers were: Conrail, Green Bay & Western,[56] Lake Superior & Ishpeming,[57] Milwaukee Road,[58] Erie Mining[59] and Soo Line.

1223 still operates in Wells and Escanaba, but it has been restricted from mainline service ever since an inspection found that the prime mover was failing.

[84] This created a big costs and time savings for both railroads as it greatly simplified operations in these twin cities.