Paxson—Early Railways of the Old Northwest. 
247 
From these diverse sources, checked up by the tables of the 
Tenth Census, it has been possible to construct a history of rail¬ 
road building for the five states northwest of the Ohio Fiver, 
which is believed to be more accurate than any other that is now 
accessible. The facts involved lend theanlselves most readily to 
presentation in the form of maps, and annual tables. Most of 
the labor has been statistical, seeking its reward in the accu¬ 
racy of its results. Yet its utilitarian character has not pre¬ 
vented it from throwing new light upon mlany of the political 
and economic problems of the Old Northwest in the two decades 
before the civil war. Transportation, after all, has determined 
both the course and the period of western development; and in 
no section of the continent has this determination been more 
nearly absolute than in the region between the Ohio Fiver and 
the lakes. 3 
Where the earliest railroad of the West was built, and when 
its wheels first rumbled in their precarious attempt to keep upon 
the flimsy tracks, is yet a matter of unimportant antiquarian 
controversy. In 1838 there were at least five projects far enough 
along to boast of actual operation. In 1837, there is sure proof 
of only one, the Erie and Kalamazoo, * 1 which was built and 
opened from Toledo to Adrian, and was contemplating further 
construction towards the western side of Michigan. 2 There 
are ruifiors of a tram-track earlier than this, in eastern Indiana, 3 
s It is said that 49 counties in Illinois, through which the Illinois 
Central ran, increased in population from 351,887 in 1850 to 1,127,087 
in 1865. Flint, H. M„ Railroads of the U'. S., 320. 
1 This was chartered as a Michigan road before the boundary con¬ 
troversy placed Toledo in Ohio. Its locomotive, the “Adrian No. 1,” of 
which a cut is often printed, arrived at Toledo in June, 1837. A few 
miles were used as a horse road in 1836. Wing, T. E., Hist, of Mon¬ 
roe Co., Mich., (N. Y., 1890), 216: Knapp, H. S., Hist, of the Maumee 
Valley (Toledo, 1872), 551, 624: Howe H., Hist. Coll, of Ohio, (Ohio 
Centennial Ed., 1891), II, 412. 
2 One local writer insists that a locomotive was run from Sandusky 
to Bellevue over the track of the Lake Erie and Mad River Ry., in 
1837; and that the Sandusky and Mansfield Ry., was operated by horse¬ 
power, over wooden rails, to Monroeville, in the same year. Hist, of 
Erie Co., Ohio, (Syracuse, D. Mason and Co., 1889), 266, 268. 
3 At Shelbyville, where a horse-power, wooden tramway is said to 
have been used on July 4, 1834. Hist, of Shelby Co., Indiana, (Chi¬ 
cago, Brant and Fuller, 1887), 286; Cottman, G-. S., Internal Improve¬ 
ments in Indiana, in Ind. Quart, Mag. of Hist., Ill, 152. 
