Railroads in the 19th Century

During the late 1790s and early 1800s, turnpike roads were the preferred method of travel, if you felt like going by horse and buggy. However, as the nation expanded westward, the roads just didn’t provide enough distance for people. Also, as steamboats came into vogue and became more technologically viable, the issue of big rivers came into play. Boats could go downstream just fine, but it was a long and difficult fight to get back upstream. Businesses needed another way to move their goods from place to place, so they decided on canals as a route to the west.

Canal building was a very expensive venture. Therefore, private businesses had much trouble getting proper funding to build their canals. State governments saw an opportunity to jump into the business, so they started to oversee the building. The biggest and most ambitious canal, the Erie Canal, was built in New York. It provided a route to the Great Lakes from the coast. It was so successful that the canal actually paid for itself in seven years. Because it was so popular, other states were jealous and built canals of their own. Most were very ambitious, very large, and very expensive failures. It was simply too hard for them to get over the various mountain ranges, so Americans looked to another technology to bring themselves and their goods west.

That technology first started in England. Entrepreneurs took notice of this new railroad system, and started to build their own. The famous Baltimore & Ohio Railroad opened in 1830, followed by many more. More advanced railroads gradually became possible, but the canals tried to stop them as best they could. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company actually blocked the advance of the B&O, to no avail. Up north, the state of New York outlawed competition between the railroads and the Erie Canal because it could get so fierce. Eventually, smaller railroad lines consolidated into larger ones, and investors were more keen to support