The Great Northern railway (Northern Pacific was a different, competing one led by tycoon Jay Cooke and which did receive land grants and also went into bankruptcy) actually didn't have the same grants provided to other railroads, perhaps because James J. Hill was not a US citizen or perhaps because he simply didn't ask for them. Part of the Great Northern was formed from J.J. Hill's purchase of the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway, which had previously received land grants for rail right of way, but Great Northern itself never actually received any land grants -- the only railroad never to have done so, in what is now a legend in US railroad history.