The other night I was listening to the evening news program and heard that, according to the AAA, nearly 80 million people are expected to travel 50 miles or more from home during the Thanksgiving holiday travel period, which runs from Nov. 26 through Dec. 2 this year. That made me think about how we do not really give much thought about how amazing our ability to travel is.
Today we take for granted the US Interstate Highway System, and how it allows us to cover significant distances is a relatively brief period of time. We also do not think much about our ability to be comfortable and entertained while traveling. If you are driving somewhere, you can open or close your car windows or turn on the heat or air conditioning at the push of a button. You can push other buttons to turn on music and other entertainment from your radio/CD player, or satellite radio. Add in modern tires, not to mention good (or at least decent) roads, and it all means a relatively painless ride. Sure, we can complain about traffic jams, potholes, construction delays and detours but all-in-all we have it so much better than early 19th century travelers.
Travel by Horse
Travel in the early nineteenth century was so much slower and more difficult than it is today that it is not easy to remember that it was also a time of momentous change and improvement. Prior to the mid-1800s, the primary modes of travel in America were either via foot, on horseback or using a horse-drawn conveyance. In New England in 1790, there were few vehicles, roads were generally rutted and rudimentary, and traveling any distance was both slow and difficult. Children and poorer adults walked everywhere, and only a minority of farmers had horses and wagons. Many loads of freight were drawn not by horses but by much slower-moving oxen.
It was very costly to travel by coach, and the roads were so bad that most people preferred to ride a horse. With a good horse, it took from four to six days, depending on the weather, to travel from Boston to New York. And this was on the best roads, which ran between major cities along the coast. Inland, the roads were worse, turning to impassable mud when it rained or to choking dust when the weather was dry. Few people could afford to feed and take care of more than one horse, so the coach-for-hire industry developed. People opened livery stables where customers could rent horses and carriages.
The young United States contained some four million people spread out over almost 800,000 square miles. In the 1800s, most country roads were dirt paths with two ruts worn by wagon wheels and a grassy strip in the middle. These roads were often hard and bumpy; in warm months, they were dry and dusty, while in the spring they were wet and muddy. In winter, they could be covered with ice or snow. Most roads were so narrow that if two buggies met, one might be forced into a ditch along the side of the road. In those days there were few bridges, so drivers simply drove their wagons through rivers and streams.
Beginning around 1790, a series of changes occured that historians have called “The Transportation Revolution.” Americans—and New Englanders in particular—rebuilt and vastly extended their roads. The answer to the road problem came in the form of a type of road that had first appeared in medieval England. It was called a turnpike, deriving its name from the pole (or pike) that stretched across the road at 10-mile intervals. At each of these barriers, travelers were required to pay a toll to continue along the road. Turnpikes were constructed on a firm bed of different layers of crushed stones, which provided drainage and eliminated many of the problems of bad-weather travel. These roads were wide enough for large horse-drawn vehicles.
By 1820, turnpikes had been built or were under construction throughout the United States, more than 3,700 miles of turnpikes, or toll roads in New England alone. Continuing through the 1840s, many thousands of miles of improved county and town roads were constructed as well. The new roads were far better constructed, maintained, and allowed much faster travel. In response, the number of vehicles on the roads increased rapidly, far faster than the population.
Another form of horse-drawn travel that developed in the early US was the Stagecoach and Stage Wagon. On May 13th, 1718, the first stagecoach trip was completed between Boston and Providence, Rhode Island. Owned by Jonathan Wardwell, this successful voyage established what would become a major mode of transport for the better part of two centuries. The first regular stagecoach trips were limited to New England, but by 1756 this had expanded to include Philadelphia and New York. Even so, there was only a modest amount of staging in the East during the fifty years before the Revolutionary War, but after that conflict, stage travel experienced rapid growth.
Early Stage Wagons were a very primitive type of public traveling carriage used in America during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The earliest form of the Stage Wagon in the Colonies was nothing more than an ordinary covered road wagon, typically drawn by four or six horses, with several transverse benches inside. The benches had no backs or padding and the bodies were set directly on the running gear without benefit of springs or thoroughbraces, so that riding was most uncomfortable.
By the mid-eighteenth century, stage lines were established connecting New York and Philadelphia with "stage-boats" providing service over the rivers and other bodies of water. Stage lines from Philadelphia, augmented with "stage-boats", offered somewhat limited service as far south as Wilmington, North Carolina in 1761. Despite their success, stagecoaches were still an uncomfortable experience for most, largely due to the use of steel and iron springs. In 1827, the Concord stagecoach changed things dramatically. The introduction of leather straps beneath the coach created a swinging motion, making the travelling experience far more pleasant.
In 1785 Congress passed legislation allowing stagecoaches to carry the mail on established stage routes, thereby giving them quasi-public status as an arm of the General Post Office. Such was the success of this new transportation system, that individual post riders were replaced by mail coaches by the late 18th century. With the significant impact of inclement weather, rocky and dangerous terrain, and bandits, stagecoaches provided a more stable and secure solution for mail delivery. For the next sixty years the stagecoach was the main carrier of the mail in the United States, and until railroads and the telegraph became common in the 1840s it was the nation's principal communications mode. Contributions by stage lines to the fledging Republic, in its often-uncertain early days, were therefore enormous.
Stage lines in the East had a generous policy toward publishers of newspapers, allowing them low rates and free printers' exchanges. This encouraged a healthy and expanding newspaper industry, and thanks in large part to the stages, the American people of the nineteenth century became the largest newspaper-reading population in history up to that point. Again, that contribution to molding the thinking of the Republic's citizens is almost incalculable.
Stagecoach lines had spread across the Northeastern states, using continual relays, or “stages,” providing taverns and lodgings for travelers, and allowing the replacement of tired horses with fresh ones were spaced about every 40 miles or so. They made travel, if not enjoyable, at least faster, less expensive, and less perilous than it had ever been. By the 1830s the travel time between Boston and New York had been reduced to a day and a half. Good roads and stages extended across southern New England, the lower Hudson Valley in New York, and southeastern Pennsylvania.
The improvements were not just in New England. Once the U.S. started claiming and colonizing the areas west of the Appalachian Mountains around the turn of the 19th century, they realized the lack of good roads was an issue. Suddenly people on the East Coast had reason to head west in droves, and they knew the trip would be a million times easier if there was a road.
Since the late 1700s, and with the support of President Washington, many Americans called for a road system that could get people and goods to the West. They wanted the road to span the entire East and West. This would allow for the exchange of goods and improve the entire country’s economy.
Known as the National Road at the time, now the Cumberland Road, it transformed the country completely. According to National Geographic, it was the first road in the new country to be funded by the federal government. Starting in 1811, it was a massive undertaking which continued for decades. Beginning in Cumberland, Maryland, trees were cut down, and hills were flattened to prepare for the massive road system. Some of the first bridges were constructed to allow for travel over rivers. These bridges were made of stone, wood, and eventually steel.
Construction of the road stopped in 1852 in Vandalia, Illinois, before it reached its original goal. But as each new section was built, it opened wide areas of the country to settlers, allowed easier trade, and laid the literal and figurative groundwork for the eventual highway system we have today. Even as it was being built, everyone knew how big a deal the National Road was. By 1825, the road was celebrated in song, story, painting and poetry. Still the road was a major accomplishment. It was a main route for settlers moving west and made it easier to ship goods.
Travel by Boat
Canals
Before the coming of the railroads, canals were the forefront of progress. In the Colonial period, water transportation was the lifeblood of the North Carolina sounds and the Tidewater areas of Virginia. The economy of the “sounds region” was dependent upon poor overland tracks or shipment along the treacherous Carolina coast to Norfolk, Virginia to reach more distant markets. In May 1763, George Washington made his first visit to the Great Dismal Swamp. After appraising the area, he suggested draining it and digging a north-south canal through it to connect the waters of the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and Albemarle Sound in North Carolina. Later, as the first president, Washington agreed with Virginia Governor Patrick Henry that canals were the easiest answer for an efficient means of internal transportation and urged their creation and improvement.
In 1784, the Virginia General Assembly chartered the Dismal Swamp Canal Company with Robert Andrews, Thomas Newton, Jr., John Cowper, Daniel Berdinger, and Donald Campbell as Directors. Construction began in 1793, with most of the labor for the hand-dug canal done by slaves hired from nearby landowners. The canal, constructed from both ends, met in the middle. When completed in 1805, the Dismal Swamp Canal connected Deep Creek, VA, and South Mills, NC, and created a waterway between the Elizabeth and Pasquotank Rivers connecting the Chesapeake Bay and the Albemarle Sound.
Starting around 1790, there was a wave of enthusiasm for construction of a network of canals to link America’s existing waterways. The 82-mile Union Canal, connecting the Susquehanna River at Middletown, Pennsylvania, and the Schuylkill River in Reading, Pennsylvania, had originally been proposed by William Penn. It was the nation’s first surveyed canal and its section from Myerstown to Lebanon was chartered as early as 1792. A lottery in 1795 raised funds initially, but construction of the Union Canal only got underway in 1821, allowing its opening in 1828.
Similarly, building began on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, intended to connect the two bays, in 1803; work continued until 1806 when the funds were exhausted. The canal company reorganized in 1822, and new surveys determined that the project would need more than $2 million in capital to complete construction. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania bought $100,000 in stock, the State of Maryland, $50,000, Delaware, $25,000, and the federal government invested $450,000, with the rest subscribed by the public.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers supplied two senior officers to the canal company in 1823 and 1824 to help determine a canal route. The officers and two civilian engineers recommended a new route with four locks, extending from what is now Delaware City, westward to the Back Creek branch of the Elk River in Maryland. Canal construction resumed in April 1824, and within several years 2,600 men were digging and hauling dirt from the ditch at an average daily wage of 75 cents. The swampy marshlands along the canal's planned route proved a great obstacle to progress; workers continuously battled slides along the "ditch's" soft slopes. It was 1829 before the C&D Canal Company could, at last, announce the waterway "open for business". Its construction cost of $3.5 million made it one of the most expensive canal projects of its time.
The 350-mile Erie Canal, first proposed in the 1780s and re-proposed in 1807, connecting New York City and Buffalo, was built between 1817 and 1825. It aided America’s westward movement and commerce with the cargo rate of $10 per ton versus $100 per ton via land routes. Both the Erie and Union canals were tow path canals. Canal boats were propelled by a combination of mules drawing them along from the tow path and men aboard the canal boats using poles to push their way along. Once it was finished in 1825, the Erie Canal cut the time it took to get from New York to Chicago in half, plus it was a much smoother ride than a carriage on unpaved roads. By the end of the 1800s, America had over 4,000 miles of canals.
Steamboats
For the first 180 years of the English colonies in North America, most people traveled by foot, horse, canoe, or wagon/carriage. Along the coast and in major Bays like the Chesapeake, freight was transported by sailing ships along with passengers who could afford the fare. Sailing ships had their drawbacks however, since the time it took them to travel from one port to another was influenced by the weather.
If the winds were non-existent, the ship could become becalmed and would have to wait for the wind to pick up. If the wind were from the wrong direction, it could impede the progress of the ship, particularly in rivers where tacking into the wind could become a problem where the channel was not very wide. Finally, in large rivers, such as the James, the speed of the current could vary based upon season or weather upstream and make an upriver passage slower, just as low water could make the passage more dangerous. Inland, people and freight traveled by stagecoach and wagons. Beginning in 1785, along the rivers and the coastal regions, all of this changed.
In 1785, John Fitch in Philadelphia, put what was known as a Newcomen steam engine in a boat and successfully trialed her in 1787 and by 1788, he was running a regular commercial service along the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Burlington, NJ carrying as many as 30 passengers at a speed of 7 to 8 miles per hour.
From October 1811 to January 1812, Robert Fulton and two other engineers worked together on a joint project to build a new steamboat, to be named New Orleans. It was designed to be sturdy enough to take down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans, Louisiana. When complete, it traveled from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where it was built, making stops at Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia); Cincinnati, Ohio; past the "Falls of the Ohio" at Louisville, Kentucky; to near Cairo, Illinois, and the confluence with the Mississippi River; and then down past Memphis, Tennessee, and Natchez, Mississippi, to New Orleans some 90 miles (140 km) by river from the Gulf of Mexico coast. By achieving this first breakthrough voyage and proving the ability of the steamboat to travel upstream against powerful river currents, Fulton, and the New Orleans, changed the entire trade and transportation outlook for the American heartland.
The Chesapeake Bay’s first steamer—Chesapeake—made her inaugural trip from Baltimore to Annapolis on June 13, 1813, and her second to Rock Hall on the Eastern Shore a week later. She then began operation regularly from Baltimore to Frenchtown, in the Elk River at the northern end of the Bay, where her passengers transferred to stagecoaches that took them to New Castle, Delaware, to board another steamer for the trip on to Philadelphia or New York. Chesapeake was 137 feet long and 21 feet wide. She weighed 183 tons. She had a mast and sail, like the other sailing boats of her day, but unlike them, she also had a smokestack, a big boiler, a noisy crosshead steam engine, and a 10-foot-wide paddlewheel. The Chesapeake made the 140-mile round trip from Baltimore to Frenchtown in roughly 24 hours, traveling at a steady 5 miles per hour no matter the wind and weather. (The sail would be raised to take advantage of the wind when conditions were right.)
In 1816, the steamboat Powhatan arrived in Norfolk VA to begin regular service up and down the James River. Owned by Norfolk and Richmond investors, it boasted 42 berths. The Powhatan made its first run to Richmond and back, returning in 21 hours. Later that year, regular semi-weekly service was set up between Norfolk, City Point (Petersburg) and Richmond. In 1817, the Baltimore Steam Packet Company, or the “Old Bay Line,” began regular steamboat service between Baltimore, Maryland, and Norfolk, Virginia. The company’s boats transported mail, crops, freight, and people along the length of the Chesapeake Bay.
One final occurrence of note is the part that the James River steamboats played in the visit of the Marquis de Lafayette to Norfolk in October of 1824 and again in January of 1825. Lafayette arrived on board Petersburg, escorted by two US Navy barges and Virginia. The Petersburg anchored off the County Wharf and an 18-oar barge brought him to the Wharf. When he went to visit Fort Monroe and Gosport/Portsmouth he was conducted there and back on the steamboat Hampton. Finally, following a Ball given in his honor, he boarded the steamboat Richmond for his departure to Richmond. Later in his tour (January 1825) enroute from Baltimore to Richmond via Norfolk, he arrived on board the steamboat Norfolk and arrived back in Norfolk aboard Richmond five days later.
By the 1820s and 1830s, technological advances in transportation, combined with a growing interest in America's natural attractions and a wealthy population, resulted in the growth of American business and travel. The construction of turnpikes led to more comfortable and faster stagecoach services, while steamboat travel made water routes both a faster and more reliable choice. This, combined with technological advances like rail transportation in the 1830s contributed to the emergence of a distinct American culture.
We hope you enjoyed today's post regarding the challenges of travel in the early United States and the revolutionary changes that were occurring in the early 19th century. We hope this gives you a better understanding of the challenges that our ancestors faced here and perhaps a better appreciation of just how good we have it today. Please join us again next month as we examine New Years Eve customs of the inhabitants of early America, many of which have been lost.
Until then, while you are here on our website, we would also encourage you to join our blog community (Look for the button in the upper right-hand corner of this post). This will allow us to inform you when we post new articles. We also suggest that you return to our blog home page and sample our other articles on a wide variety of late-18th and early-19th century subjects; both military and civilian.
Finally, if you live in Virginia, Maryland, or North Carolina, we invite you to visit The Norfolk Towne Assembly’s home page to learn more about us, what we do, and how you can get involved in our historic dance, public education, and living history efforts.
References
Connor Prairie. (2019, April). Travel and Transportation. Retrieved from Conner Prairie: https://www.connerprairie.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/PT-Travel-and-Transportation.pdf
Norfolk Towne Assembly. (2020, February 14). Canals – A Tool for Economic Growth in the Early Republic. Retrieved from Norfolk Towne Assembly; Academy of Knowledge: https://www.norfolktowneassembly.org/post/canals-a-tool-for-economic-growth-in-the-early-republic
Norfolk Towne Assembly. (2022, March 11). Revolution in Travel – early steamboat travel in the James River and the Chesapeake Bay. Retrieved from Norfolk Towne Assembly; Academy of Knowledge: https://www.norfolktowneassembly.org/post/a-revolution-in-travel-early-steamboat-travel-in-the-james-river-and-the-chesapeake-bay
Park City Museum. (2007, September). Introduction: Transportation in America and the Carriage Age. Retrieved from Park City Museum: https://parkcityhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Teacher-Background-Information.pdf
Paullin, C. O. (1932). Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States. Baltimore, MD: Carnegie Institution of Washington; American Geographical Society of New York.
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