Lucian C. Sprague was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 railroad executive. Sprague was born in Serena, Illinois

Serena, Illinois

Serena is an unincorporated community in LaSalle County, Illinois. Serena has a post office with ZIP code 60549....

 on September 29, 1882, and during his early years held a variety of railroad jobs, including stints at the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy

Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad

The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad was a railroad that operated in the Midwestern United States. Commonly referred to as the Burlington or as the Q, the Burlington Route served a large area, including extensive trackage in the states of Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri,...

, Great Northern, and Baltimore and Ohio

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was one of the oldest railroads in the United States and the first common carrier railroad. It came into being mostly because the city of Baltimore wanted to compete with the newly constructed Erie Canal and another canal being proposed by Pennsylvania, which...

. In 1922, he was hired by the Uintah Railway

Uintah Railway

The Uintah Railway was a small railroad company in Utah and Colorado in the United States. It operated from 1902 to 1939.-History:The company was founded in 1902 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Gilson Asphaltum Co. with the sole purpose of building a railroad into the isolated Uintah basin...

, a remarkable and remote narrow gauge short line in the mountains along the Colorado

Colorado

Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...

-Utah

Utah

Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...

 border. Sprague remained at the Uintah for most of the decade, becoming the line's general manager.

In 1935, Sprague was appointed co-receiver of the bankrupt Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway

Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway

The Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway was an American Class I railroad that built and operated lines radiating south and west from Minneapolis, Minnesota which existed for 90 years from 1870 to 1960....

 (M&StL), a mid-sized railroad that extended south and west from Minneapolis. The M&StL had struggled financially for years, and by the 1930s was threatened with liquidation; Sprague, however, managed to turn the company around, and the railroad's twenty-year receivership ended in 1943. Sprague was named president of the M&StL at the end of receivership, and he held that position until being ousted in a dramatic 1954 shareholders battle orchestrated by Benjamin W. Heineman

Benjamin W. Heineman

Benjamin W. Heineman was an attorney and American railroad executive. Heineman first gained attention in the railroad industry in 1954, when he orchestrated a successful proxy battle for control of the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway...

.

Sprague died of a heart attack in Minneapolis on August 3, 1960.