506 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1939 



combination lost the race to a horse-drawn railroad car on the 

 tracks between Baltimore and EUicott's Mills, Md. (pi. 8, fig. 1). 

 The horse, owned by Stockton and Stokes, the great stagecoach 

 proprietors of the day, won the race by a fluke caused by the failure 

 of the belt that operated the blower of the engine. The race dem- 

 onstrated, however, the superiority of the railway beyond the per- 

 adventure of a doubt. 



While the struggle for the survival of the best kind of trans- 

 portation was raging east of the Mississippi Kiver, settlers, in 1836, 

 were pushing their way southwestward into Texas. Slow-moving 

 covered wagons, creaky Mexican carreta carts, and grunting pack 

 animals (pi. 8, fig. 2) wound their leisurely way along El Camino 

 Real past the Alamo, stormed shortly before by the Mexican Gen- 

 eral Santa Ana and his troops, and today the sacred shrine of Texas 

 liberty. 



For another three decades, the white canvas-topped covered 

 wagons were relied upon as the most dependable vehicle by the 

 emigrants to the West. In the East, however, the reaction had set 

 in and wagons had begun to yield first place to the more efficient 

 railroads. The recession was obvious on the National Pike, begun 

 in 1806, to serve the territory northwest of the Ohio River and 

 the first main highway to be built with Federal funds. By 1840, at 

 the eastern extremity near the stone-arch bridge over Will's Creek, 

 west of Cumberland, Md. (pi. 9, fig. 1), Conestoga freight-wagon 

 and stagecoach owners began to feel the loss of business to the 

 Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. 



Many of the vehicles placed on the auction block by the bank- 

 rupt horse-transportation companies in the East found their way 

 across the Mississippi River, where they were used in that extensive 

 population movement which by the middle of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury had pushed the frontier of the United States westward until 

 it touched the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Beginning with a trickle 

 of trappers to the Northwest when Astoria was founded, in 1811, 

 the movement had swelled to a mighty stream of settlers by the 

 time of the great emigration in 1843. The Oregon Trail, across 

 the Rocky Mountains and down the Coliunbia River (pi. 9, fig. 2), 

 joined with the extended National Pike to provide the first overland 

 route connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts. 



Now that the railroads east of the Mississippi River were far in the 

 lead of their opponents in the race to provide better transportation 

 facilities, feeble efforts were made to better the condition of the 

 wagon roads. It was natural that recourse should be had to wood 

 in the region where trees were plentiful and sawmills dotted the 

 forests. Following the example of the Canadians who built the 



