THE BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD
Even after the Erie canal was built and long lines of boats were
carrying the grain and other products of the West to New York, the men
of Virginia and Maryland did not give up the notion of still making
the trade of the western country come their way. They planned the
Chesapeake and Ohio canal, to reach the Ohio river, and thought that
other canals across the state of Ohio would let them into lake Erie.
By the Ohio river they would connect with New Orleans and the upper
Mississippi river, and through lake Erie they could reach the towns and
farms that border lake Huron, lake Michigan, and lake Superior.
A canal along the Potomac valley had been talked of several years
before the Revolution, when Richard Henry Lee laid a plan for it before
the Assembly of Virginia. Doubtless others thought of it too, as of
the Erie canal, long before it was made. At the end of the War of the
Revolution Washington made a long journey into the wild woods of New
York. He went to the source of the Susquehanna at Otsego lake, visited
the portage between the Mohawk and Wood creek, and saw for himself
that New York had a great chance for navigation and trade. But he had
a natural love for his own Virginia, and he did not intend to let New
York go ahead of his native state. His journeys across the mountains as
a surveyor and as a soldier gave him a knowledge of the Ohio country,
and as he had himself taken up much good land there, he wished to have
an easy way, by land or water, from the sea to the rich Ohio valley. So
he thought much about a canal to run by the side of the Potomac, and he
joined with others who felt as he did to form the Potomac Company. They
started a canal, but they found so much in the way that they were not
able to go far with it.
[Illustration: FIG. 38. MOUNT ROYAL STATION, BALTIMORE AND OHIO
RAILROAD, BALTIMORE]
The plan for a canal came up again twenty years after Washington died,
and in 1823 a charter was given for building the Chesapeake and Ohio
canal. New York had then been six years at work on the Erie canal and
would finish it in two years more. If the Virginia and Maryland people
had known that most of them would be dead before their canal was half
done, and that it would never be really finished, they would not have
undertaken it.
[Illustration: FIG. 39. CHESAPEAKE AND OHIO CANAL, CUMBERLAND]
They did not begin the work until five years later, in 1828. Then a
great crowd came together at Georgetown, now a part of Washington, on
the Potomac, to see the first earth thrown out. President John Quincy
Adams made the principal speech and then took a spade to begin the
digging. The spade hit a root and would not go into the soil. The
President set down his foot more firmly, but still the spade would
not move. At last, determined to succeed, he pulled off his coat for
the job. The crowd liked this and cheered loudly, while Mr. Adams
accomplished what he had set out to do.
On this very day something else was going on at Baltimore, forty
miles away. Baltimore was not on the Potomac, but her people did not
propose to be left out of the western trade on that account. After much
disputing a charter had been granted for building what became one of
the most famous, as it is one of the oldest, American railways,--the
Baltimore and Ohio. Hence Baltimore had a celebration of her own on
this same Fourth of July, 1828.
They did not have the President of the United States to help them, but
they fared very well. They had great faith in what they were doing, and
doubtless would have shouted even louder had they known what a great
railroad they were starting and what a hard time the canal people would
have.
There was only one man remaining of all the patriots who had signed the
Declaration of Independence almost fifty years before. This was Charles
Carroll of Carrollton, and he was the guest of Baltimore on that day. A
prayer was offered, the Declaration was read, and after an officer of
the railway company had spoken Mr. Carroll removed the first earth. As
if nature would be kind to an old man, no root made his work hard; and
the superstitious may say that the President’s toilsome digging over
in Georgetown was a bad omen for that enterprise. It is easier to look
back than to see into the future.
Both canal and railway went on building, but as they needed nearly
the same route in some places, they did not get on well together. The
canal was located in the state of Maryland, along the north bank of the
Potomac. This was done in some measure because a large part of the
water which would be needed for the canal came down from the uplands
on the north side. It took twenty-three years to dig the trench as
far as Cumberland, so that it was 1851 before boats could run between
Cumberland and tide water. The original plan of carrying the canal
beyond Cumberland and across the mountains was never carried out.
Just below the point where Wills creek enters the Potomac there is a
dam, and from the pond so made the water is taken into the upper end
of the canal. Much traffic has passed up and down the canal, but, on
the whole, it has not paid for the cost of building and repairing.
Sometimes it has been out of use, and a few months ago the state of
Maryland sold it for a small sum to the Wabash Railway Company.
The _North American Review_ has been published for a long time. At
least seventy-five years ago this magazine printed two articles on
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. By reading them we can see how the
intelligent people of that time felt about building it.
In favor of the proposed railroad they said, first, that it would not
be closed by ice for several months each year, as the Erie canal and
the rivers were. Secondly, they reminded the public that Baltimore is
two hundred miles nearer the Ohio navigation than New York is, and
one hundred miles nearer than Philadelphia. Thirdly, they argued that
New Orleans was a long way off, and its climate hot and unhealthful.
Provisions sent by that route would be likely to spoil, and the traders
taking the goods down the river might fall sick. Further, the rivers in
a dry summer would be too low for navigation.
[Illustration: FIG. 40. HIGHEST POINT ON BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD,
AT SAND PATCH, PENNSYLVANIA]
Nor did Baltimore people think that the Erie canal could get much trade
except from regions close to lake Erie, and they had noticed that lands
not far from the canal still sent a good deal of produce down the
Susquehanna river to Baltimore. There was no port south of them that
was so good as theirs; in short, they showed a very proper pride in
their own home and a conviction that Baltimore was as good as any other
American city, if not, perhaps, a little better.
They said also that the lime used for building in the city of
Washington was brought all the way from Rhode Island, while there was
a great abundance of good limestone in their own mountains, although
it could not be carried by wagons. There was coal also, in seams so
thick and wide that it could never be used up, but there was no way
of getting it down to the sea where it would run factories, smelt
iron, and propel the new steamships that so soon would make the ocean
a well-traveled highway. Slate also was to be had, and marble, and
gypsum, and timber, but these could not be brought to the towns where
they might be used. There was, moreover, much iron ore all along the
proposed route, and we all know that iron is the most important of the
metals.
It had long before been learned that there were many fish in Chesapeake
bay, and that New England was not to have the fishing business all
to herself. Better even than this, there were then, as there are
now, places under the shallow waters where countless oysters lived
and multiplied. It was said, even in 1827, that if there could be a
railroad to carry things quickly, oysters might be sent to people
living far from the sea.
Baltimore’s notion of swift carrying was much like that of the Erie
canal packet owners. Trains could go four miles an hour, and thus
goods might be sent from Baltimore to the Ohio river in sixty-two and
one-half hours. Some hopeful people thought that the speed might even
be raised to eight miles an hour. When cars run at that rate in these
days we begin to talk about getting out and pushing the engine.
The builders of the railroad had what seem to us curious ideas of
laying a foundation for the track. They dug a trench in some places,
putting into it broken stone, and on this they laid long slabs of
stone, or “stone rails.” On these, in their turn, the iron rails were
riveted down. Until car springs were invented the jolting must have
been like that of a farm wagon.
Even when the track was finished no decision had been made as to how
the cars were to be moved. Mr. Hulbert, in one of his stories of
historic highways, tells of several experiments which were made. Some
one invented a locomotive in which a horse was to tread an endless belt
and thus make the machine go, carrying with it the horse and dragging
the cars. On one trip, when several newspaper men were present to
report the trial, the train ran into a cow and they were all tipped
out and tumbled down a bank. The method did not have much praise in
the papers. Sails were also tried, and one car which was thus moved by
wind was called _Æolus_. This car, with its mast and other ship-like
rigging, made much talk, but that was all. And no one could quite see
how it would ever be possible to draw a car on a curved track. This
meant much, for it was out of the question to build a railway through
the mountains without many curves, and some of them rather short ones.
But there were those who thought that if a curved road were possible,
it would be a good thing because the engineer could occasionally look
back along the line and see how his train was coming on.
[Illustration: FIG. 41. LOOKING DOWN THE POTOMAC FROM HARPERS FERRY
Maryland on the left; West Virginia on right and in foreground;
Virginia in the distance; Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and
Chesapeake and Ohio canal at the left; Shenandoah river enters
under bridge on the right
]
But steam was to win the day. Mr. Peter Cooper had a locomotive, called
_Tom Thumb_, built in 1829, and an old picture shows an exciting race
between this little engine and a horse car. The steam car won the race,
and it is now to be seen whether or not electricity will drive steam
out of business on the railways.
By 1833 the road was laid as far as Harpers Ferry, a place made lively
by armies and guns in the Civil War. It is a rugged old town, built
near the spot where the Shenandoah joins the Potomac, and both together
have cut a fine gorge through the Blue Ridge. To-day as one stands in
the upper part of the village and looks down through the great gorge,
he sees the bridge and tracks and trains of the Baltimore and Ohio, and
the channel of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal (Fig. 41). The railway
outstripped the canal, for the road was finished to Cumberland in 1842,
nine years before canal boats floated into that place; and in 1853 the
first train rolled into Wheeling, on the Ohio river.
Another part of the road now runs farther north to Pittsburg and leads
on to Chicago, while yet another passes south to Cincinnati and St.
Louis. Eastward the main line runs to Philadelphia and stops at the
Whitehall terminal in New York City. These long lines, with many spurs
and side lines, make up the Baltimore and Ohio Railway system, which,
like the Pennsylvania and the New York Central, joins the seaports
of the Atlantic coast with the fields and cities of the Mississippi,
and carries in either direction the rich mineral products of the
intervening mountains.
Like her neighbors on the Atlantic, Baltimore stretches out her
hands to sea and land. The city was begun in 1730, at which time a
Mr. Carroll sold the land for it at forty shillings an acre. When
Washington first went to the Ohio there were only twenty-five houses
in Baltimore, but in 1770 there were twenty thousand people, and the
new city was drawing trade from Philadelphia. In 1826, when the Erie
canal was building, Baltimore had become a city of sixty thousand
inhabitants. Now it has more than half a million people, and is the
sixth American city. In foreign trade, however, it stands third, and
its docks are busy places. The Hamburg-American, the North-German
Lloyd, and the Red Star lines all send regular steamers between
Baltimore and Europe, and hundreds of others sail to ports on our own
coast, to the West Indies, and to South America. Baltimore builds
ships as well as sails them, to carry the corn, flour, and meat of the
prairies and the great plains to foreign lands, and to bring back their
products in exchange. Where there are railways and ships there are
always merchants and factories. Out of the gains of trade a Baltimore
merchant built one of the most famous of our schools, the Johns Hopkins
University.
[Illustration: FIG. 42. COKE OVENS AT MEYERSDALE, PENNSYLVANIA]
There has been no more important factor in the development of the
United States than is found in the great railway systems, which, by
linking all sections together, give unity and strength to the whole
fabric of our government. Washington’s dreams of his country’s future
are already overtopped by her actual achievements, and the most hopeful
among those who first saw the advantages of steam engines could hardly
have looked forward to the swift transportation of to-day.
In the year 1901 an American ship and American railway trains ran a
great race to London over land and sea. The start was from Australia
and the distance was more than thirteen thousand miles. The race was
not against other ships and other trains, but against time. The mail
from Sydney in New South Wales usually went by the Red sea and the Suez
canal, a route which is a thousand miles shorter than is the Pacific
route, and which took thirty-five days and a few hours. It happened on
August 13, in the morning, that three hundred and sixty-seven sacks of
important mail for London were piled on the dock, beside which lay a
new American ship, the _Ventura_. Because no good British ship was at
hand that morning, the post-office authorities thought that they would
let the vessel with the Stars and Stripes carry the mail. She did carry
it, and on the evening of September 2 she laid down the bags on the
pier at San Francisco.
The American railroads tried their hand at carrying the British mail.
The Southern Pacific took it swiftly across to Ogden, in Utah. The
Union Pacific seized it, two hours late, and said that the time should
be made up. The train raced a thousand miles to Omaha and made up some
of the time but not all. Then it was off for Chicago, where the Lake
Shore road had a “special” ready to overtake the Fast Mail. It ran two
hundred and forty-four miles in two hundred and sixty-five and a half
minutes, and did overtake it. Then came Buffalo, New York, Queenstown,
and London. The carriers in that great city started out with the mail
early in the morning of September 14. If the bags had come by the
shorter route under the British flag, they would not have reached
London until September 16. This is what great railways and great ships
do in our time,--they make neighbors of all men.
[Illustration: FIG. 43. THE OBSERVATION END, BALTIMORE AND OHIO
RAILROAD]