GEOGRAPHICAL INFLUENCES IN OHIO 485 



pleted several miles of a railroad, " The Mad Eiver and Lake Erie," 

 towards Dayton, Avhich point it reached in 1844. Ohio capital and en- 

 thusiasm for railway construction were abundant, as shown by the fact 

 that in 1837 forty-three railroad companies were organized by state 

 charters. 8 Many of these roads were never built, but some of them 

 have become the best lines in the state. By 1846 a road was completed 

 from Cincinnati to Springfield, and by 1848 through steam connection 

 was made between Cincinnati and Sandusky. 9 Columbus and Cleve- 

 land were connected in 1851, and during the same year a railroad was 

 finished between Cleveland and Cincinnati. 10 The next year a line was 

 opened from Cleveland to Pittsburg. 



Geographically Ohio needed transverse railroads; the lake and the 

 river were its natural thoroughfares to markets ; the wide, fertile major 

 valleys of the state trend north-south, and its products move almost by 

 gravity to one outlet or the other. Ohioans, except the immigrant an- 

 cestors, never gave further thought to the " Appalachian Barrier " ; 

 their commercial friends on the seabooard 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 advantage to Ohio. 

 The Hudson-Mohawk valley made the construction of a line a child's 

 task for New York, but the Appalachians imposed on Baltimore and 

 Philadelphia a herculanean undertaking; the former city early recog- 

 nized 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 Phila- 

 delphia; 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. 11 



In 1828 construction was commenced at Baltimore on a line headed 

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

 tion was reached by the Baltimore and Ohio Eailroad, the difficulties of 

 construction having been underestimated. 



The next year, 1854, the Pennsylvania line reached Pittsburg, 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 



8 Ohio Gazetteer, Columbus, 1839, pp. 531-33. 



9 Ohio Archeological and Historical Society Publications, Vol. IX., 1901, 

 p. 190. 



10 Ibid., p. 190. 



u Philip E. Thomas, quoted in Johns Hopkins University Studies in His- 

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



