America Past; D17; Transportation

[bars and tone] [sound effects] Are. At 10 a.m. on October 26, 1825, a cannon was

fired in Buffalo, New York. A few seconds later, another cannoneer a number of miles away heard the sound and fired his gun. At 11:20, the last cannon was fired in New York City. Over 500 miles away. [cannon fire] The Erie Canal was open. (Singing) Forty nine miles from Albany, forget it I never shall. What a terrible storm we had that night on the E R I E Canal. [fiddle music] The Erie Canal opened in 1825. It was immortalized in folk songs and folktales almost from the very beginning. 365 miles long, 20 feet wide, 4 feet deep. Built at a cost of seven million dollars. It was considered to be the engineering marvel of the young nation. Now, it'll inspire the building of countless other canals. Most of which will not be very successful. Why were they wanting to build all these canals? They built 3,000 miles of them! Any two bodies of water, somebody went out and

dug a canal in between 'em. They couldn't rest until they had done it. Why? Well, they're wanting to move produce from the West to the East. People have begun moving into the Ohio River Valley, and those people wanted to trade with the East. How? Well, there were rivers, but rivers often had rapids in them or the currents were too fast. Roads? The roads were almost nonexistent. So, how do you do it? You put your goods on a flat boat, float them down the Ohio, down the Mississippi, out through the Port of New Orleans, and around to the East coast. That would work. But it was very time consuming. They wanted a better way to ship goods between the West and the East. The Erie Canal did that for them - did it very well. It went from Lake Erie across New York State to the Hudson River and out through the Port of New York. In fact, the two-way trade on the Erie Canal made New York City the busiest seaport in the United States.

Since New York City had profited from the Erie Canal, other eastern cities thought they had to have one. Washington D.C.'s solution to the problem was to build the Chesapeake and Ohio canal. It would continue to operate up into the 20th century. In fact, there's people living today who actually worked on that canal and recall life on it vividly. [bridle jangling] I liked the mules. I liked the boats. But it was ?a lot of things? for a youngster. You'd go maybe for four or five hours and see nobody, and I never cared too much for it. But I- I had to do it. Because my daddy, he was the boss; I wasn't. You could take care of a baby on there, as same as at home. We had plenty of water and plenty of soap and plenty of everything. We washed on there. We hung our clothes out on the boat. So I thought it was a good life. Even

I reckon, doing whatever the men did, feeding their mules ?or not? harnessing the mules. Most canals were built primarily for freight. This canal, the C&O, hauled coal from Cumberland, Maryland down to Georgetown near Washington, and they did it fairly cheaply. It used to cost about $100 a ton to ship coal. After the canals are built, it was about $10 a ton. And you can put, oh, hundred, eight hundred and ten tons of coal in one of these boats and two mules could pull it. And the person driving the mule had to walk along all that distance. That might not be quite so pleasant. People could also travel on the canals. The Erie did a big passenger business. The C&O ?over here? did some. Cost you about a penny and a half per mile if you were willing to travel two miles an hour. Now, if you insist on tearing along at four miles an hour that'll cost you five cents a mile. But it was kind of

fun. You could jump off, steal watermelons, go into the town, pick fights. Had to watch out that you didn't get scraped off the top by a little bridge. You could eat on there. Sleeping conditions were a trifle crowded. [snoring] Sleep- -ers were packed away like dead pigs. The bunks were simply frames with canvas tacked over them. Once in his bunk, the would be sleeper found it too narrow and too close to the one above to turn over. There was absolutely no privacy. [Host] The Canals didn't always operated through level terrain. They sometimes had to raise or lower the boat because one in the canal was higher than the other. And they did that through a system of locks. The locks on the C&O had to raise the boat about 600 feet and all, but

what if you had to raise a boat 2,000 feet? That's the problem that Pennsylvania faced. See, they wanted to build a canal from Philadelphia to the Ohio River Valley. New York had a canal. Washington had a canal. Philadelphia had to have a canal. So they built one. But the problem was, there were 2,000 feet of Allegheny Mountains in the middle of the state. What do you do? Well, they would start you out on the canal. Transfer you to a railroad. Transfer you to a cable car. Drag that thing up the mountain side by cable. And you coast down it. Charles Dickens rode it and said it was one of most harrowing experiences of his life. Put you in a canal do the same thing again and you got to the next mountain range. They managed to built that thing across the state of Pennsylvania. They never made a lot of money, but it does show the importance of trying to tap that Ohio River Valley trade. And Philadelphia was able to do it. The mules worked well on these canals. They were strong, easily trained, and cheap to maintain.

Of course animals have been serving mankind well for 4,000 years. But the industrial revolution is now in full swing, and the future of the new nation lay not in animal power, but in steam power. The steam engine was finally perfected by James Watt a Scotsman from the 18 century. People got to wondering if a steam engine could run a machine, could you make it run a boat, and lots of

people tried to do that, and spent lots of money trying to do it. John Fitch in Philadelphia built him one. Had it on the Delaware River. It would only go two miles an hour. People just weren't interested in a steamboat that would go two miles an hour. A canal boat could do that. Robert Fulton gets credit for inventing the first really successful steamboat. The Claremont. Ran it up and down the Hudson River. Made money on it. That's unusual. Inventors are supposed to die, poverty stricken. But it wasn't on the Hudson that the steam boat really came into its own. It was on the Ohio, and the Mississippi. That area the people were moving in to. Put yourself in their position for a minute. You live west of the Allegheny Mountains. You want to ship your goods East. How are you going to do it? As we said before there weren't any decent roads. There were very few canals. So you go back to the river route. Down the Ohio. Down the Mississippi River. Off to New Orleans. And the steamboat could do that. The first steamboat to successfully go

down the Ohio, Mississippi and back, did it in 1811. It was called the New Orleans. From then on the steamboat became popular in the West. The Western river boat looked different than those in the East. When you think steamboat you're probably thinking of the steamboats that operated on the Mississippi, and Ohio; not of the eastern boats. Eastern ones like more like ocean liners. Their main cabins are below the first deck. In the West they were above it. The water was very shallow. You had to build most of the boat above the water level. Sometimes water was only 9-10 feet deep. There were boats built that could actually operate in four feet of water; either the side wheeler or a stern wheel paddle just barely dipped into the water to move that boat. Captain's bragged about how little water their boat would draw, one said that his could float on the dew. Another said if the water got low, he simply opened a keg of beer and they sailed on the foam.

Some of the boats apparently were unmitigated dumps, but others were described as floating palaces. Thick carpets, wood paneling, fancy grand salons, and ornate chandeliers. Many of the boats were famous for extremely lavish entertainment. Dances Bands. Banjo players. In fact, long after they were significant as passenger boats, they continued to operate up and down the river as show boats. Then, there was always the riverboat gambler. Many of whom did not have a very long life expectancy. [Speaker 4] We caught the rogue, but he jumped off the boat to swim ashore. The last we saw of him, he was stuck in the mud up to his waist [laugh]. The river was rising that night.

[Host] Life on board these steamboats was exciting. But it wasn't all that safe. Believe it or not, about 30% of the boats were destroyed within five years of the time they were built. Sometimes with incredible loss of life. The Sultana went down with 1500 men on board. That's a worse disaster than the Titanic. Lloyd's insurance company listed 200 minor, and 87 major disasters in a period of 20 years. Why the accidents? Snags. Trees would fall off the riverbank get out of the water tear the bottom out of a boat. Captains insisted on racing ships, so they'd build up steam in the boiler, tie down the safety valve, the thing blows up. Passengers and boat going along with it. One company actually towed a barge back behind it. Put passengers on it. So if the boat went up, the passengers could sit and watch. Hopefully they would not drift into the flames.

Sometimes the river changed course. The Mississippi is not very cooperative. One captain woke up one morning, and his ship was on the main street of a town. The river had diverted through the area of the village. In spite of the dangers, two way traffic was heavy on the Mississippi. In 1850 there were a thousand passenger boats on the river. By 1909, there was one. What happened to them? The same thing that happened to the canals. They were replaced for the railroads. People in the West still had to get to the East just like before. They still had to move their crops. But the railroad was more flexible. It was easier to ship by rail than to go down the Mississippi, and out through New Orleans. So the railroad replaces them. Today, people ride the Delta Queen. They ride it to recapture those days of the steamboat. But they really wish they were back there. They wish they were in the days of the Natchez, JM White and the Silver Heels, the Grand Republic. And once more, just once more, they would like to stand on the levee. Stand and wait.

For the Robert E. Lee. While many Americans are traveling on those new steamboats and canals, most people who eagerly went to the West, in the early 19th century traveled on road. Their eagerness caused them to despair rather quickly of traveling along sunken ruts that passed as highways. Fortunately, the problem was partially solved by improvements in road building, and the development of the steam locomotive. There'd always been roads. Often old Indian trails called traces. This is the just Natchez Trace. A link from the Mississippi River to Nashville Tennessee. Many of these routes hardly deserve the name road. Besides the danger of being robbed, a traveler - particularly in the rainy season - had to contend with ruts and mud holes. That made travel virtually impossible. The Westward movement created a need for better transportation. Obviously, people in the West

wanted to sell their goods somewhere. Presumably in the East. They needed to buy manufactured goods from the East, and move those to the West. So that was one reason for better transportation. Another was a matter of national unity. The people across the mountains, were separated from the rest of the country. There actually was a fear, that they might break away and start a whole new country of their own. So the government was interested in connecting that area to the east to bind the nation together. Now one way to do that was to build roads. Everybody agreed that roads needed to be improved. What they couldn't agree on, is who ought to pay for it. If a road went from one state to another, should the national government pay for that; or should the state governments? That's what they argued about. While they were arguing, private companies built roads. Private companies? You wouldn't think of that

today. A private company building a road across the country and charging you to travel on it. They wouldn't make any money that way. They didn't make a lot in those days. Maybe a 3% return on their investment. But they tried. They'd put a post here, and another post over, there with a log across it. A pointed log called a pike. You would come along, pay your toll, and they would turn the pike out of the way. That's where we get the term turnpikes. They'd build a toll house right there. Somebody would live there. They would watch for travelers and charge them. The national government did build one road, in the early 19th century. Called it the National Road. Sometimes it's called the Cumberland Road. You can still travel on it. Lots of people still do. They don't always know it. It's now US40 in Pennsylvania. Or in some sections it's I-70. Along US40, you'll still see those old toll houses that were part of the old national road. They went from the East Coast

to the Ohio Valley. Actually from Cumberland Maryland to Wheeling West Virginia That's why sometimes it's called the Cumberland road. It was extended on through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. Cost them about $13,000 a mile to build it, and some sections it was 80 feet wide. They wanted it wide enough that a wagon, and a team of horses to turn around in the middle of it. The National Road is very busy. Maybe as many as 2000 vehicles a month going along it. And because it was busy, they needed places for people to stop, to sleep and to eat.

Between Baltimore Maryland and Wheeling West Virginia, there were as many as 294 inns. Now most of them were not as elegant as the Mt. Washington Tavern here. You could sleep in these places for about 35 cents a night probably on the floor. But before you slept, well there were other things to do. There was always drinking. Their business was both beds and booze. In fact one man said that his job as an innkeeper was to water the horses and Brandy the men. You could play cards. No kings or queens or jacks on these. You have presidents, famous women, Indians maybe. We don't want royalty. You can play checkers. The pieces were sliced up corn cobs. You could sit around smoke your pipe. Generally enjoy yourself. Where were all these people going? Well. 80 percent of them were going to the Ohio River Valley. They were settlers moving to the West. And because they moved to the West, they had to make a living out there. They had

to ship their goods to the East. So if you're going west in your stagecoach, maybe at 6 to 10 miles an hour, you're going to encounter herds of cattle, pigs, flocks of turkeys being driven back to the East. So the road is congested, it's crowded. We were never out of sight of a traveller on the national road. "Octogenarians who participated in the traffic will tell you that never before were there such landlords, such taverns, such dinners, such whiskey where such an endless cavalcade of coaches and wagons". The wagons he was referring to were Conestoga wagons. When you think covered wagon, you think Conestoga wagon: curved up at the end, often painted blue. Because the drivers of those things often smoked cigars, cigars took the nickname of "stogies" a name that has stuck to this day. Conestoga comes from a

valley in Pennsylvania where the wagons were developed. Well, the National road and other Western roads will fall into decline. They'll come back again when the automobile shows up. But the railroad will replace them. The railroad is faster and smoother. It replaced canals, it replaced steamboats to a certain degree, and it will replace the roads. But in its heyday, the National Road - the Cumberland Road, the old pipe, whatever you want to call it - was a highway of hope. Thousands and thousands. "It was the highway of hope and the pilgrims who tried it were lords of the woodland and sons of the sod. And the hope of their hearts was to win an abode at the end, the far end of the National Road." The development of the railroad shows the connection between the industrial revolution and transportation. The taking of a steam engine and putting it into a railroad locomotive.

Now they would use rails for a long time. They mounted stagecoaches on these things. Had horses pulled them. That was a smoother ride that worked pretty well. But the real breakthrough came with putting a steam engine in a locomotive. Now the first locomotive built in the United States for regular service, was the best friend or the best friend of Charleston. They ran it on Christmas Day 1830. Hundred forty one passengers, flat cars with ??? on their booming along as they went. Hundred thirty six miles long. That made it the longest railroad in the whole world. People were fascinated by these things. Even Henry David Thoreau thought at last the earth had a race ??where they don't have it. And Emily Dickinson isolated crouching in her woods wrote, I like to see it lap the miles and lick the valleys up. It was the first big business in the country. Erie railroad cost $23,000,000 to build.

Nobody had thought of spending that type of money for a single business. By 1850, 30,000 miles of railroad in the United States. The poor animals they didn't know what to make of it. Farmers complained that their chickens wouldn't lay eggs, cows wouldn't give milk. But you understand why? Imagine yourself a good quiet peaceful self-respecting town along comes this thing. ?Helen Hartness?. blazing through your pasture, snorting fire. No wonder they didn't like. The people did. One passenger described. A railroad like this: [Speaker 7] Just imagine such a contraption rushing unexpectedly by a stranger on a dark night. Whizzing, and rattling, and panting its fiery furnace gleaming. It's chimney vomiting smoke. It's body of cars like the tail of a giant dragon. [Host] Well what was the travel like for the passengers?

Well there wasn't a whole lot that a modern traveler would enjoy. For one thing, they burned wood. You take a wood fire and you have a high wind, as you would get when the train moving along. You'd get sinders blowing around. The sides of cars are ususally open sailing in here, land on your lap, set you on fire. Sometimes large chunks of wood would do that. There was always a danger of an explosion. Occasionally, you found a train with a barrier car. The flat car between the engine and the passengers here with bales of cotton on it. To protect them in case of an explosion. Accidents were a problem. Look at the pictures in any magazine of the times full of railroad accidents. They seemed to be obsessed with them. The invention of the Telegraph helped out a lot. They say that necessity is the mother of invention. It was necessary to send a message ahead that the train was coming. [Sound of morse code] Samuel Morse developed the telegram. It was almost immediately put in to use by the railroads. Early cars

were connected with chains just hanging slack, and when the engine started out "Pow" jerk right down the line. When they stop, they all slam together. Fairly early, they developed a system to get around that problem at least. A lot of people weren't sure the train was here to stay. Surely the horse was superior. There was a famous race incidentally, between a horse, and a railroad engine, the Tom Thumb. The horse one that. Probably the last time a horse beat the locomotive. There was opposition from drivers of wagon trains and canal owners. They didn't like the new railroad; used to shoot at them as they went by. A lot of doctors said the trains are injurious to your health. The human body couldn't stand the high speed. It would suck the air out of your lungs. They'd collapse. People used to carry a pen and pencil with them, and as they went sailing along at 20 miles an hour they would write their name to show that they still had their wits about them. In spite of all this, [music begins to play]

People decided trains were going to be around awhile. Improvements begin to take place. The majority of railroads were built in the North, and tended to connect the North East with the West. Very few lines ran north and south. It had been hoped that the new developments in transportation would unite the nation. That worked out as far as the West was concerned, but not for the South. When we get to the civil war, it will be the North and the Northwest united against the South. The fact that these transportation routes ran that way, have a great deal to do with that. Today, it's kind of hard to imagine the feeling that people had toward steam and steam locomotives. They were fascinated by them. When you grew up, you wanted to be an engineer. Other jobs might pay better, you didn't care. This was exciting! He was a hero, girls would sing about a railroader for me.