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Water Transportation: A New Method of Travel
Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston introduced the first steamboat, known as the Clermont, on the Hudson River. Steamboats quickly caught on and became the preferred mode of water transportation. Between 1817 and 1820 the number of steamboats in America jumped from 17 to 69, and by 1855, the number had reached 727. Before the advent of the steamboat, flatboats, sometimes little more than rafts, carried goods down the Mississippi River. They were then cut up and sold as firewood. -
Construction of the Erie Canal
July 4, 1817, Governor Dewitt Clinton broke ground for the construction of the the Erie Canal, which spanned 363 miles and connected Buffalo and Albany, New York. Through the Erie Canal, New York City was linked, by the Hudson River in the East, and the Great Lakes in the West, all the way to Ohio. The growing canal system linked the major trading and manufacturing centers of the nation. Shipping costs dropped dramatically. -
Canal Slows Down Dramatically
Railroad Boom Starts kicking into gear as future blueprints of railroads are drawn. -
Railroad Boom Starts Up!
There were some 300 miles of railroad in operation, but all were short lines. By 1838 Baltimore interestshad extended a railroad to New York. The Philadelphia and Reading, charted in 1833 was opened all the way to Reading, on December 5, 1839, when the "Gowan & Marx" another Pennsylvania Locomotive chugged into Philadelphis carrying barrells of flour, pig iron, and whiskey as freight, and 60 passangers. -
Disagreement and The Convention in Philadelphia
It was argued that Philadelphia was 81 miles closer to Eria by rail than New York and this made Philadelphia the logical outlet for the farm and industrial products of Northwestern PA. In 1855 a railroad was completed from Philadelphia to Norristown with the trains drawn by "Old Ironsides," the first locomotive built by Matthias Bladwi -
Railroad Fever!
The 1850's saw the railroad fever burning even more strongly in just about every part of the state. Shortlines were projected in every direction, usually to proved a route to another railroad or to a canal as means of stimulating buisnesses. Cities and even entire countries pledged their resources to buy railroad compnay stock and citizens everywhere who had any intereset in a buisness or industry were also subscribing to the support of railroad companies.
