[Illustration: (cover)]
[Illustration: EASTERN UNITED STATES]
FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY
THROUGH
THE APPALACHIANS
BY
ALBERT PERRY BRIGHAM, A.M.
PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY IN COLGATE UNIVERSITY
AUTHOR OF “GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY”
GINN AND COMPANY
BOSTON · NEW YORK · CHICAGO · LONDON
ATLANTA · DALLAS · COLUMBUS · SAN FRANCISCO
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY
ALBERT PERRY BRIGHAM
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
621.1
The Athenæum Press
GINN AND COMPANY · PROPRIETORS
· BOSTON · U.S.A.
PREFACE
This book grows out of the conviction that geography in the schools
must return somewhat to human interests. In saying this the author will
scarcely need to defend himself against the charge of undervaluing
physiography. It is only a question of wise adaptation to youthful
students. Elementary history also needs to be placed in its setting of
physical conditions. It is here attempted to promote both these objects
in the study of the eastern United States. If geography and history
can be well correlated, both of these great themes may be taught with
economy of time and with stronger interest.
Much more might be said concerning the growth of centers, the
agriculture, and the commerce, but the limits of space are rigid.
Hence roads and westward movements have been made the main topic. The
geography is not taught formally, but is woven in with the story.
Care has been given to the maps of the several regions, that they
should clearly express the essentials and avoid the vagueness of many
small-scale representations of the Appalachian belt.
A. P. B.
COLGATE UNIVERSITY
October, 1906
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. BOSTON AND THE BERKSHIRES 1
II. PIONEERS OF THE MOHAWK AND THE HUDSON 14
III. ORISKANY, A BATTLE OF THE REVOLUTION 29
IV. THE ERIE CANAL 40
V. THE NEW YORK CENTRAL RAILWAY 53
VI. OLD JOURNEYS FROM PHILADELPHIA TO THE WEST 63
VII. THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 74
VIII. THE NATIONAL ROAD 86
IX. THE BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD 98
X. CITIES OF THE OHIO VALLEY 111
XI. THE GREAT VALLEY 129
XII. TO KENTUCKY BY THE CUMBERLAND GAP 142
XIII. FRONTIER SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN 155
XIV. CITIES OF THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 167
INDEX 183
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE PAGE
1. Cunard Steamship 3
2. Union Station, Springfield 6
3. Deerfield Valley, Charlemont, Mass. 8
4. Eastern Portal of Hoosac Tunnel 11
5. South Station, Boston 12
6. Henry Hudson 16
7. Sir William Johnson 20
8. Genesee Street, Utica 23
9. Old Fort Johnson, Amsterdam, New York 26
10. Oriskany Battle Monument 30
11. Herkimer directing the Battle of Oriskany 33
12. Herkimer’s Monument and Mansion 36
13. De Witt Clinton 43
14. Erie Canal, Utica 46
15. Erie Canal, Syracuse 48
16. Traveling by Packet on the Erie Canal 50
17. Erie Canal and Solvay Works, Syracuse 51
18. De Witt Clinton Train 54
19. Twentieth Century Limited 57
20. Rounding the Noses, Mohawk Valley 59
21. Penn Square, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 65
22. Bridge over Conestoga Creek, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 67
23. Tollhouse near Lancaster, Pennsylvania 68
24. Hambright’s Hotel, on the “Lancaster Pike” 70
25. Old Road House, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania 71
26. Freight Locomotive, Pennsylvania Railroad 75
27. Tunnel, Portage Railway 76
28. Broad Street Station, Philadelphia 77
29. Bridge, Pennsylvania Railroad, above Harrisburg 79
30. Pennsylvania Railroad Shops, Altoona 80
31. Horseshoe Curve, Pennsylvania Railroad 81
32. Rock Cut, Pennsylvania Railroad 84
33. Tollhouse near Brownsville, Pennsylvania 87
34. Milestone, Braddock’s Road, Frostburg, Maryland 90
35. Old Road House, Brownsville, Pennsylvania 92
36. Cumberland and Gap in Wills Mountain 95
37. Bridge and Monument, National Road, near Wheeling, West
Virginia 96
38. Mount Royal Station, Baltimore 99
39. Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, Cumberland 100
40. Highest Point on Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Sand Patch,
Pennsylvania 103
41. Down the Potomac from Harpers Ferry 106
42. Coke Ovens, Meyersdale, Pennsylvania 108
43. The Observation End, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad 110
44. Old Blockhouse, Pittsburg 112
45. Pittsburg 115
46. Coal Barges, Pittsburg 119
47. Pittsburg at Night 120
48. Furnaces near Pittsburg 121
49. River Front, Cincinnati 125
50. Luray, Shenandoah Valley 131
51. James River Gap in the Blue Ridge 134
52. Hilly Farm Lands, near Knoxville 136
53. Great Valley, from the Pinnacle, Cumberland Gap 139
54. Cumberland Gap from the East 143
55. Daniel Boone 145
56. Pineville Gap, Cumberland River 147
57. Cornfield near Cumberland Gap 150
58. Kentucky Blue Grass 152
59. Three States Monument, Cumberland Gap 153
60. George Rogers Clark 157
61. On the French Broad 159
62. John Sevier 162
63. James Robertson 164
64. Sevier Monument, Knoxville 165
65. Old Statehouse, Knoxville 166
66. Street in Knoxville 168
67. On the Campus, University of Tennessee 169
68. Marble Quarry near Knoxville 171
69. Statehouse, Nashville 173
70. Chattanooga from Cameron Hill 175
71. Broad Street, Atlanta 177
72. Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills, Atlanta 178
73. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta 179
74. Iron Furnace, Birmingham 180
MAPS
Eastern United States _Frontispiece_
New England 4
New York 26
Pennsylvania 64
Southern Appalachian Region 132
FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY
CHAPTER I
BOSTON AND THE BERKSHIRES
From the time of the settlement of Massachusetts Boston has had a large
share of the business of the country. Her natural advantages are great.
On the one hand there is her harbor, sheltered by many islands from
the storms of the Atlantic; on the other are tidal rivers and level
highways leading to the interior of the state. Emerson, who was born in
Boston, wrote:
Each street leads downward to the sea,
Or landward to the west.
For generations, as the city has grown, her people have been crowding
back the ocean by filling in the shallows, and now her busy streets
extend over acres of “made land,” while from the south, the west, and
the north, lines of railway connect her with all parts of America.
Not many years after the War of the Revolution a Boston merchant ship
went around the world. She took on board a native at Hawaii, sold her
load of furs in Canton, rounded Cape Horn, and anchored at length in
Boston harbor. So great an achievement did this seem that Governor
Hancock and the people said fine things and made merry.
This little ship was eighty-three feet long, and you could measure off
seven or eight times her length on one of the big liners of to-day.
Later the same ship set sail again, and on the west coast of America,
in one of the roughest seas, her master, Captain Gray, saw the mouth
of a great river. He was determined to enter it. Having crossed the
breakers, he sailed up the river more than twenty miles, and to-day it
bears the name of his ship, the _Columbia_. Boston was reaching out
into the wide world. Many years later this discovery had much to do
with securing the rights of the United States in the Oregon country
against the claims of Great Britain.
Young lads often went out on these voyages, and the training made them
strong men. There were dangers on the ocean then which to-day we do not
fear, for pirates still lay in wait for merchantmen and foreign powers
took liberties with American ships. One vessel seen in Boston harbor
was named _Catch-me-if-you-can_.
Many years later, when Mr. Samuel Cunard of Halifax took a contract
to carry the royal mail between Liverpool and America, there was an
immediate protest from the Boston merchants against ending the voyage
at Halifax. They urged the great commercial advantage of having the
ships run westward to Boston after stopping at Halifax, and so powerful
were these arguments that the first Cunard liners came steaming into
Massachusetts bay.
[Illustration: FIG. 1. ONE OF THE CUNARD STEAMSHIPS WHICH SAIL FROM
BOSTON TO-DAY]
This was not pleasant for New York people, who tried to show that
theirs was the better port. As if to help in the fight against Boston,
the harbor froze over in the winter of 1844, and the Cunard ship, the
_Britannia_, could not sail. Determined to hold their own, the Boston
people engaged Frederick Tudor, a great exporter of ice, to bring his
machinery from the fresh-water ponds and cut a way. He soon made a lane
of open water, and the _Britannia_ sailed out for Liverpool.
While ocean trade was growing much had been done on the land.
Settlements were first made at Plymouth, Salem, and Boston, and as soon
as possible the rough forest trails joining these towns were changed
into roads. Many ferries and bridges were needed to cross the streams,
and roads were carried back into the country as the people settled
farther from the sea.
After Providence was begun, in the Narragansett country, and the rich
lands along the Connecticut were settled, there was need of roads
across the hills of Massachusetts, so that the colonists could visit
each other, exchange letters, and thus be less exposed to danger from
savages in the great American wilderness.
The highway leading along the east coast was called Bay Road. A post
rider went between Boston and New York in 1704, and a rough path he had
to travel. It was thought remarkable, four years later, that a woman,
Madam Sarah Knights, made that journey. She afterwards taught school in
Boston, and Benjamin Franklin was one of her pupils. Somebody scratched
these lines on a window pane in her schoolroom:
Through many toils and many frights
I have returned, poor Sarah Knights;
Over great rocks and many stones,
God has preserved from fractured bones.
[Illustration: NEW ENGLAND
BOSTON AND MAINE RAILROAD (FITCHBURG DIVISION) -+-+-+-+-+-
BOSTON AND ALBANY RAILROAD ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯]
There is no doubt about the “great rocks and many stones” of New
England, but around Boston, at any rate, one usually sees them now at a
safe distance.
In western Massachusetts is the great Berkshire country. Through most
of its length the Housatonic river runs to the southward. At the north
the Hoosick river flows from it, across a corner of Vermont, to the
Hudson. On the first is beautiful Pittsfield, and on the second is busy
North Adams with its mills. In sight everywhere are the mountains,
not very high and usually covered with forest, but sometimes bold and
rocky. Farther north we should call them the Green mountains, but here
we name them the Berkshires. The eastern range, which separates the
Housatonic valley on the west from the Connecticut valley on the east,
is Hoosac mountain, of which we shall hear again.
These long ranges of mountains run from north to south, and while it
was easy to follow the valleys between them, it was hard to go across
them from east to west or from west to east. Boston and all the chief
towns of New England lay eastward, and the rest of the country was
west of the mountains. If a Massachusetts family wished to settle
in the fertile lands of western New York or Ohio, they had to cross
the mountains. In our day the mountain region is full of towns and
beautiful summer homes, but then it was a wilderness which in places
was almost impassable. If it was difficult to make a single journey
between the Connecticut river and the Hudson, it was quite out of the
question to carry grain and fruit from the West to Boston, and to bring
back in exchange the goods made in her factories.
Near Pittsfield, in the heart of the Berkshires, rises the Westfield
river, which has cut a deep valley eastward through the mountains.
Opposite the place where this stream enters the Connecticut the
beautiful city of Springfield has now grown up, partly on the low
grounds and partly on a terrace. It is readily seen that the Westfield
valley forms a natural roadway from here westward to Pittsfield, and on
toward Albany and the Mohawk in New York. We cannot say that the valley
was made for the cities, but the cities were made, in part at least,
because the valley was there.
[Illustration: FIG. 2. UNION RAILWAY STATION, SPRINGFIELD,
MASSACHUSETTS]
The first roads that improved on the Indian trails were, of course,
made for wagons. The gorge of the Westfield was so rugged that a
hundred years ago it seemed almost impossible to make a good wagon
road through it. There were some people, however, who thought that
it could be done and who determined to do it. Their courage won, and
before long there was a good highway all along the roaring river. The
bowlders were rolled out of the way, the trees were cut, the roadbed
was made, and people could go east and west in the stages without
risk of losing their lives or even of breaking their bones. This was
accomplished soon after 1825, but it did not solve all the problems of
the Massachusetts people, for, as we shall soon learn fully, the Erie
canal was finished in that year, and a long string of canal boats began
to carry produce from the West to New York.
The good people of Boston watched all this going on. Every load
of grain was headed straight eastward as if it were coming to
Massachusetts bay, thence to go by vessel to Europe. But when it
reached the Hudson it was sure to turn off down that river to help load
ships at the piers of New York. And New England had only a wagon road
across the mountains! A wagon road will never draw trade away from a
tidal river, and thus we can understand why a prominent Massachusetts
man, Charles Francis Adams, spoke of the Hudson as “a river so fatal to
Boston.” Boston might have all the ships she wanted, but if she could
not get cargoes for them they would be of no use. Shipowners, seeing
that there was plenty of western freight in New York, sent their boats
there. It was indeed time that Boston people began to ask themselves
what they could do.
They still had ships, but these were usually “down East” coasters,
and the noble vessels from far eastern ports, laden with spices and
teas, silks, and all the spoils of Europe and Asia, rarely came to
Boston, but brought more and greater loads to New York and Baltimore,
where they could lay in corn and wheat for the return voyage. Even the
Cunards transferred most of their boats and finally all their mail
steamers to New York.
[Illustration: FIG. 3. THE VALLEY OF DEERFIELD RIVER AT CHARLEMONT,
MASSACHUSETTS, ON THE LINE OF THE BOSTON AND MAINE RAILROAD]
The people of Boston first said, “We will build another canal, up the
Hoosick and down the Deerfield valley, and then the canal boats will
keep on to the east.” As states often do, they appointed a commission
to see if the canal could be built, and what it would cost. But what
were they to do about Hoosac mountain, which stood a thousand feet
high, of solid rock, between the Hoosick valley on the west and the
Deerfield valley on the east?
They decided that they would tunnel it for the water way. Rather
strangely they thought it could be done for a little less than a
million dollars. A wise engineer made the survey for the canal, and
when he remarked, “It seems as if the finger of Providence had pointed
out this route from the east to the west,” some one who stood near
replied, “It’s a great pity that the same finger wasn’t thrust through
the mountain.” The plans for the canal were finally given up, and
though many years later such a tunnel was made, it was not for a canal,
nor was the work done for a million dollars.
Every one was talking now of railways, but few thought that rails could
be laid across the Berkshires. It was even said in a Boston paper that
such a road could never be built to Albany; that it would cost as much
to do it as all Massachusetts would sell for; and that if it should be
finished, everybody with common sense knew it would be as useless as
a railroad from Boston to the moon. We need not be too hard on this
writer, for it was five years later when the De Witt Clinton train
climbed the hill from Albany and carried its handful of passengers to
Schenectady.
One of the friends of the railway scheme was Abner Phelps. When he was
a senior at Williams College, in 1806, he had thought of it, for he
had heard about the tram cars in the English coal regions. In 1826 he
became a member of the legislature of Massachusetts, and the second day
he was there he proposed that the road should be built.
In time the project went through, but at first it was planned to pull
the cars with horses, and on the down grades to take the horses on the
cars and let them ride. We do not know how it was intended that the
cars should be held back, for it was long before the invention of air
brakes. The line was built to its western end on the Hudson in 1842,
and thus Boston, Worcester, Springfield, and Albany were bound together
by iron rails.
There was only a single track and the grades were heavy. The road
brought little trade to Boston, and most of the goods from the West
still went by way of the Hudson to New York. It was, however, a
beginning, and it showed that the mountain wall could be crossed.
The subject of a Hoosac tunnel now came up again. It would take a long
time to tell how the tunnel was made; indeed, it was a long time in
making. It was begun in 1850 or soon afterwards, and the work went
slowly, with many stops and misfortunes, so that the hole through the
mountain was not finished until November 27, 1873. On that day the
last blast was set off, which made the opening from the east to the
west side; and the first regular passenger train ran through July 8,
1875, fifty years after it had been planned to make a canal under the
mountain.
In order to help on the work the engineers sunk a shaft a thousand
feet deep from the top of the mountain to the level of the tunnel,
and from the bottom worked east and west. This gave them four faces,
or “headings,” on which to work, instead of two, and hastened the
finishing. The whole cost was about fourteen million dollars.
[Illustration: FIG. 4. EASTERN PORTAL OF THE HOOSAC TUNNEL, BOSTON AND
MAINE RAILROAD]
It took great skill to sink the shaft on just the right line, and to
make the parts of the tunnel exactly meet, as the men worked in from
opposite directions. They brought the ends together under the mountain
with a difference of only five sixteenths of an inch! You can measure
this on a finger nail and see how much it is. The tremendous task was
successfully accomplished, and Boston was no longer shut off from the
rest of the country by the mountains.
[Illustration: FIG. 5. THE SOUTH STATION, BOSTON]
The end of it all is not that Boston has won all the ships away from
New York, but that gradually she has been getting her share. Now she
has great Cunarders, White Star Liners, and the Leyland boats,--all
giant ships sailing for Liverpool,--and many other stately vessels
bound for southern ports or foreign lands. Now you may see in Boston
harbor not a forest of masts but great funnels painted to show the
lines to which the boats belong, and marking a grander commerce than
that which put out for the Indies long years ago; for to-day Boston is
the second American port. The great freight yards of the railways are
close upon the docks, and travelers from the West may come into either
of two great stations, one of which is the largest railway terminal in
the world. In and about Boston are more than a million people, reaching
out with one hand for the riches of the great land to the west, and
with the other passing them over the seas to the nations on the farther
side.
Man has taken a land of dense forests, stony hills, and wild valleys,
and subdued it. It is dotted with cities, crossed by roads, and is one
of the great gateways of North America.