My AutoBlogs!

that, in boldness of design and difficulty of execution, this
Pennsylvania scheme of mastering the Alleghanies could be
compared with no modern triumph short of the feats performed at
the Simplon Pass and Mont Cenis
Well did Robert Stephenson, the famous English engineer, say
that, in boldness of design and difficulty of execution, this
Pennsylvania scheme of mastering the Alleghanies could be
compared with no modern triumph short of the feats performed at
the Simplon Pass and Mont Cenis. Before long this line of
communication became a very popular thoroughfare; even Charles
Dickens ‘heartily enjoyed’ it–in retrospect–and left
interesting impressions of his journey over it:

Bookmark to:

the Ohio country which the South desired
Flour, salt, iron, cider and peach brandy were staple products of
the Ohio country which the South desired. In return they shipped
molasses, sugar, coffee, lead, and hides upon the few keel boats
which crept upstream or the blundering barges which were
propelled northward by means of oar, sail, and cordelle. It was
not, however, until the nineteenth century that the young West
was producing any considerable quantity of manufactured goods.
Though the town of Pittsburgh had been laid out in 1764, by the
end of the Revolution it was still little more than a collection
of huts about a fort. A notable amount of local trade was carried
on, but the expense of transportation was very high even after
wagons began crossing the Alleghanies. For example, the cost from
Philadelphia and Baltimore was given by Arthur Lee, a member of
Congress, in 1784 as forty-five shillings a hundredweight, and a
few months later it is quoted at sixpence a pound when Johann D.
Schoph crossed the mountains in a chaise–a feat ‘which till now
had been considered quite impossible.’ Opinions differed widely
as to the future of the little town of five hundred inhabitants.
The important product of the region at first was Monongahela
flour which long held a high place in the New Orleans market.
Coal was being mined as early as 1796 and was worth locally
threepence halfpenny a bushel, though within seven years it was
being sold at Philadelphia at thirty-seven and a half cents a
bushel. The fur trade with the Illinois country grew less
important as the century came to its close, but Maynard and
Morrison, cooperating with Guy Bryan at Philadelphia, sent a
barge laden with merchandise to Illinois annually between 1790
and 1796, which returned each season with a cargo of skins and
furs. Pittsburgh was thus a distributing center of some
importance; but the fact that no drayman or warehouse was to be
found in the town at this time is a significant commentary on the
undeveloped state of its commerce and manufacture.

Bookmark to:

Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Alexandria–had relied for a while
on the deterring effect of a host of critics who warned all men
that a canal of such proportions as the Erie was not practicable,
that no State could bear the financial drain which its
construction would involve, that theories which had proved
practical on a small scale would fail in so large an undertaking,
that the canal would be clogged by floods or frozen up for half
of each year, and that commerce would ignore artificial courses
and cling to natural channels
It seems plain that the Southern rivals of New York City–
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Alexandria–had relied for a while
on the deterring effect of a host of critics who warned all men
that a canal of such proportions as the Erie was not practicable,
that no State could bear the financial drain which its
construction would involve, that theories which had proved
practical on a small scale would fail in so large an undertaking,
that the canal would be clogged by floods or frozen up for half
of each year, and that commerce would ignore artificial courses
and cling to natural channels. But the answer of the Empire State
to her rivals was the homely but triumphant cry ‘Low Bridge!’–
the warning to passengers on the decks of canal boats as they
approached the numerous bridges which spanned the route. When
this cry passed into a byword it afforded positive proof that the
Erie Canal traffic was firmly established. The words rang in the
counting-houses of Philadelphia and out and along the Lancaster
and the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh turnpikes–’Low Bridge! Low
Bridge!’ Pennsylvania had granted, it has been pointed out, that
her Southern neighbors might have their share of the Ohio Valley
trade but maintained that the splendid commerce of the Great
Lakes was her own peculiar heritage. Men of Baltimore who had
dominated the energetic policy of stone-road building in their
State heard this alarming challenge from the North. The echo ran
‘Low Bridge!’ in the poor decaying locks of the Potomac Company
where, according to the committee once appointed to examine that
enterprise, flood-tides ‘gave the only navigation that was
enjoyed.’ Were their efforts to keep the Chesapeake metropolis in
the lead to be set at naught?

Bookmark to:

rival canal with canal
There could be but one answer to the challenge, and that was to
rival canal with canal. These more southerly States, confronted
by the towering ranges of the Alleghanies to the westward, showed
a courage which was superb, although, as time proved in the case
of Maryland, they might well have taken more counsel of their
fears. Pennsylvania acted swiftly. Though its western waterway–
the roaring Juniata, which entered the Susquehanna near
Harrisburg–had a drop from head to mouth greater than that of
the entire New York canal, and, though the mountains of the
Altoona region loomed straight up nearly three thousand feet,
Pennsylvania overcame the lowlands by main strength and the
mountain peaks by strategy and was sending canal boats from
Philadelphia to Pittsburgh within nine years of the completion of
the Erie Canal.

Bookmark to:

to be found in the annals of American commerce originated almost
simultaneously in the Muskingum and Monongahela regions
One of the most remarkable plans for the capture of foreign trade
to be found in the annals of American commerce originated almost
simultaneously in the Muskingum and Monongahela regions. With a
view to making the American West independent of the Spanish
middlemen, it was proposed to build ocean-going vessels on the
Ohio that should carry the produce of the interior down the
Mississippi and thence abroad through the open port of New
Orleans. The idea was typically Western in its arrogant
originality and confident self-assertion. Two vessels were built:
the brig St. Clair, of 110 tons, at Marietta, and the Monongahela
Farmer, of 250 tons, at Elizabeth on the Monongahela. The former
reached Cincinnati April 27, 1801; the latter, loaded with 750
barrels of flour, passed Pittsburgh on the 13th of May.
Eventually, the St. Clair reached Havana and thus proved that
Muskingum Valley black walnut, Ohio hemp, and Marietta
carpenters, anchor smiths, and skippers could defy the grip of
the Spaniard on the Mississippi. Other vessels followed these
adventurers, and shipbuilding immediately became an important
industry at Pittsburgh, Marietta, Cincinnati, and other points.
The Duane of Pittsburgh was said by the Liverpool ‘Saturday
Advertiser’ of July 9, 1803, to have been the ‘first vessel which
ever came to Europe from the western waters of the United
States.’ Probably the Louisiana of Marietta went as far afield as
any of the one hundred odd ships built in these years on the
Ohio. The official papers of her voyage in 1805, dated at New
Orleans, Norfolk (Virginia), Liverpool, Messina, and Trieste at
the head of the Adriatic, are preserved today in the Marietta
College Library.

Bookmark to:

first ten miles of the road from its eastern terminus and were
completed in 18191
In April, 1811, the first contracts were let for building the
first ten miles of the road from its eastern terminus and were
completed in 18191. More contracts were let in 1812, 1813, and
1815. Even in those days of war when the drain on the national
treasury was excessive, over a quarter of a million dollars was
appropriated for the construction of the road. Onward it
crawled, through the beautiful Cumberland gateway of the Potomac,
to Big Savage and Little Savage Mountains, to Little Pine Run
(the first ‘Western’ water), to Red Hill (later called ‘Shades of
Death’ because of the gloomy forest growth), to high-flung Negro
Mountain at an elevation of 2325 feet, and thence on to the
Youghiogheny, historic Great Meadows, Braddock”s Grave, Laurel
Hill, Uniontown, and Brownsville, where it crossed the
Monongahela. Thence, on almost a straight line, it sped by way of
Washington to Wheeling. Its average cost was upwards of thirteen
thousand dollars a mile from the Potomac to the Ohio. The road
was used in 1817, and in another year the mail coaches of the
United States were running from Washington to Wheeling, West
Virginia. Within five years one of the five commission houses
doing business at Wheeling is said to have handled over a
thousand wagons carrying freight of nearly two tons each. The
Cumberland Road at once leaped into a position of leadership,
both in volume of commerce and in popularity, and held its own
for two famous decades. The pulse of the nation beat to the
steady throb of trade along its highway. Maryland at once
stretched out her eager arms, along stone roads, through
Frederick and Hagerstown to Cumberland, and thus formed a single
route from the Ohio to Baltimore. Great stagecoach and freight
lines were soon established, each patronizing its own stage house
or wagon stand in the thriving towns along the road. The
primitive box stage gave way to the oval or football type with
curved top and bottom, and this was displaced in turn by the more
practical Concord coach of national fame. The names of the
important stagecoach companies were quite as well known, a
century ago, as those of our great railways today. Chief among
them were the National, Good Intent, June Bug, and Pioneer lines.
The coaches, drawn by four and sometimes six horses, were usually
painted in brilliant colors and were named after eminent
statesmen. The drivers of these gay chariots were characters
quite as famous locally as the personages whose names were borne
by the coaches. Westover and his record of forty-five minutes for
the twenty miles between Uniontown and Brownsville, and ‘Red’
Bunting, with his drive of a hundred and thirty-one miles in
twelve hours with the declaration of war against Mexico, will be
long famous on the curving stretches of the Cumberland Road.

Bookmark to:

Each man to fear a stranger;
Whate”er the game, we join in chase,
Despising toil and danger;
And if a daring foe annoys,
No matter what his force is,
We”ll show him that Kentucky boys
Are Alligator-horses
We are a hardy, freeborn race,
Each man to fear a stranger;
Whate”er the game, we join in chase,
Despising toil and danger;
And if a daring foe annoys,
No matter what his force is,
We”ll show him that Kentucky boys
Are Alligator-horses.

Bookmark to:

The first American cow pony was not without his cowboy. Though
the drivers were not all of the same type and though the
proprietors, so to speak, of the trans-Alleghany pack-horse trade
came generally from the older settlements, the bulk of the hard
work was done by a lusty army of men not reproduced again in
America until the picturesque figure of the cow-puncher appeared
above the western horizon. This breed of men was nurtured on the
outer confines of civilization, along the headwaters of the
Susquehanna, the Potomac, the James, and the Broad–the country
of the ‘Cowpens.’ Rough as the wilderness they occupied, made
strong by their diet of meat and curds, these Tatars of the
highlands played a part in the commercial history of America that
has never had its historian. In their knowledge of Indian
character, of horse and packsaddle lore, of the forest and its
trails in every season, these men of the Cowpens were the kings
of the old frontier.

Bookmark to:

it began a new period of American transportation; it ushered in
an era of speculation unheard of in the previous history of the
country; and it introduced American lawmakers to the great
problem of controlling public corporations
The Lancaster Turnpike is interesting from three points of view:
it began a new period of American transportation; it ushered in
an era of speculation unheard of in the previous history of the
country; and it introduced American lawmakers to the great
problem of controlling public corporations.

Bookmark to:

invention as Fulton
Livingston already had no little experience in the same field of
invention as Fulton. In 1798 he had obtained, for a period of
twenty years, the right to operate steamboats on all the waters
of the State of New York, a monopoly which had just lapsed owing
to the death of Fitch. In the same year Livingston had built a
steamboat which had made three miles an hour on the Hudson. He
had experimented with most of the models then in existence–
upright paddles at the side, endless-chain paddles, and stern
paddle wheels. Fulton was soon inspired to resume his efforts by
Livingston”s account of his own experiments and of recent
advances in England, where a steamboat had navigated the Thames
in 1801 and a year later the famous sternwheeler Charlotte Dundas
had towed boats of 140 tons” burden on the Forth and Clyde Canal
at the rate of five miles an hour. In this same year Fulton and
Livingston made successful experiments on the Seine.

Bookmark to: