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The Best Friend of Charleston:
The first American-built freight and passenger steam locomotive.
The Best Friend plugged (?) into history on Christmas Day, 1830, when it traveled the first six miles of the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company's track. The eager crowds that gathered in Charleston saw a locomotive and cars much like this full-scale replica. Smoke swirled, steam hissed, and passengers cheered as the Best Friend headed down the track on that historic run.
"We flew on the wings of the wind at the varied speed of fifteen to twenty-five miles an hour, annihilating time and space... leaving all the world behind... like a live rocket, scattering sparks and flames on either side..." -- Charleston Courier, December 29, 1830.
The steam locomotive had a tremendous impact on South Carolina and on the rest of the country. The state was a world leader in developing this form of transportation. Within a few years, the railroad became the main carrier of cargo and passengers in South Carolina. Its speed and efficiency ended the widespread use of steamboats and canals which began only a few years earlier. |