Existing comment:
Railroads Eclipse a National Road
"Thus will scientific power conquer space."
For several decades in the early 1800s, thousands of Conestoga Wagons, "ships of inland commerce," ruled the National Road. With their sloping bodies, wheels taller than a man and six-horse teams skillfully maneuvered with a single "jerk line," they could carry up to eight tons of freight. The railroad, a Baltimore-borne transportation revolution, soon put them out of business, along with the taverns, livery stables, wheelwrights, and blacksmiths that served them.
In 1830, the National Road was still under construction when here, from the Roundhouse, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad introduced the first regular freight and passenger service in the United States. By 1852, the B & O spent $15 million to lay track as far as the Ohio River. Freight and travel time was cut in half. The "national road" was now on rails. |