130 Frank Carney 



Ohioans, except the immigrant ancestors, never gave further 

 thought to the '^Appalachian barrier;" their commercial friends 

 on the seaboard looked after building the east-west lines. 



The rivalry of the Atlantic ports in establishing through 

 railroad transportation to the Mississippi basin was thus an advan- 

 tage to Ohio. The Hudson-Mohawk valley made the construc- 

 tion of a line a child's task for New York, but the Appalachians 

 imposed on Baltimore and Philadelphia a herculean undertaking; 

 the former city early recognized the limitations of canals. A 

 citizen of Baltimore, in urging the undertaking, said : 



Baltimore lies two hundred miles nearer to the navigable waters of 

 the west than New York, and about one hundred miles nearer to them 

 than Philadelphia; to which may be added the important fact, that 

 the easiest and by far the most practicable route through the ridge 

 of mountains, which divides the Atlantic from the western waters, is 

 along the depression formed by the Potomac in its passage through 

 them.^ 



In 1828 construction was commenced at Baltimore on aline 

 headed for the Ohio valley, but twenty-five years elapsed before 

 this destination was reached by the Baltimore and Ohio Rail- 

 road, the difficulties of construction having been underestimated. 



The next year, 1854, the Pennsylvania line reached Pitts- 

 burg, with which city Cleveland had been joined the preceding 

 year. In 1852 a road was opened from Buffalo to Cleveland; 

 the same year, one from Toledo to Chicago; and the next year 

 through traffic was made possible from Buffalo to Chicago. In 

 1857 a road across southern Ohio and on to St. Louis was com- 

 pleted; this was practically a continuation of the Baltimore and 

 Ohio Railroad. By 1860 Ohio had what was considered in that 

 day very ample railway facilities, a condition which contributed 

 largely to the position that the state at once took in manufac- 

 turing. 



When men were first building railroads, the matter of divi- 

 dends was not as carefully thought out as nowadays. Knowledge 

 came with experience. Usually the railroad fever struck a sec- 

 tion of the state, and a railroad was built somewhere. More 



' Philip E. Thomas, quoted in Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical 

 and Political Science, Third Series (1885), p. 99. 



