It stretches roughly 103 miles (166 km) from Winona, Minnesota in the east to Waseca in the west where the rails continue as the Tracy Subdivision.
The Winona, St. Peter & Missouri River Railroad Company was awarded the property in 1861, but failed to make sufficient progress toward a goal of having trains up and running to Rochester by a deadline set by the state legislature, so ownership transferred to the Winona and St. Peter Railroad Company in 1862.
The first passenger train, operated by Col. DeGraff, finally ran on December 9 of that year between Winona and Stockton and back, and the first freight load was carried the next day.
A fourth branch off the mainline was made farther west (in today's Tracy Subdivision) the same year, from Sleepy Eye north to Redwood Falls.
Amtrak's Empire Builder still runs along Canadian Pacific's River Sub, adjacent to the Waseca Sub at Minnesota City Junction.
Rochester and Mayo lost this fight, as the Surface Transportation Board and the courts approved the DM&E's Powder River expansion without requiring a bypass.
[4] The CP later dropped its plans to extend track to the Powder River Basin, and instead spun off the west end of the DME (Tracy, MN, and westward) to a new regional, the Rapid City, Pierre and Eastern Railroad.