The Dawn of the Railroad

Theodore Roosevelt on the back platform of a B&O car in Chicago, 1912.

(Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago Historical Society.)

“It is with no ordinary feelings we announce the fact—that a plan for making a railroad from the city of Baltimore to some point on the Ohio River, has been considered and adopted.” These words in a Baltimore newspaper, Niles’ Weekly Register, told the world that a group of businessmen had gotten a charter, 180 years ago today, to build the first public railroad in America. The Baltimore & Ohio was born as an innovative entry into the vital race to tap the riches of the American West.

In the 1820s the country was undergoing both an unprecedented expansion and a transportation revolution. Three eastern port cities, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, were vying to establish the most effective link to the West. New York took the lead in 1825 with the opening of the Erie Canal. Philadelphians worked at digging their own canal, the Main Line, toward Pittsburgh. That project, with inclined planes to haul cargo up the steep intervening mountains, would be completed in 1830.

Baltimore was already profiting from its connection to the National Road, a turnpike that reached the Ohio River at Wheeling, Virginia (West Virginia had yet to split off), in 1818. But wagon transport was far too costly to compete with canal traffic.

Baltimore entrepreneurs led by Philip E. Thomas, who would serve as the company’s president during its formative years, looked at the options and decided to take their chances with rail, which had yet to prove itself. They received their charter from the Maryland legislature on February 28, 1827. The next Fourth of July they enlisted Charles Carroll, the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence and a B&O stockholder, to lay the cornerstone of the project.

President John Quincy Adams had already decided that canals were the way of the future, and he broke ground the same day for the competing Chesapeake & Ohio canal. The federal government favored the canal, giving it first dibs on the best route west.

A year and a half later, the first passengers were riding the B&O. In May 1830 they could travel as far as Ellicott’s Mills, about 10 miles west of the city. The cars, which resembled stagecoaches, were initially pulled by horses over wooden rails capped with iron. Those searching for a better means of propulsion suggested cars driven by the wind or powered by a horse on a treadmill. Both ideas were soon superseded by a more revolutionary concept. In 1830 Peter Cooper’s one-ton locomotive Tom Thumb proved the viability of steam power, and before long the B&O began carrying both passengers and freight in steam-driven trains of cars. To support the weight, cast-iron rails replaced the wooden ones.

Andrew Jackson became the first U.S. President to ride on a railroad, taking a short trip on the B&O in 1833. Two years later, the company opened a line connecting Washington and Baltimore. It was along that route that Samuel F. B. Morse sent the words “What hath God wrought!” 40 miles over wires in 1844. They were the first telecommunication in history.

For a time the two industries developed what proved a natural synergy. The railroads provided a convenient route for telegraph wires, and the telegraph allowed more efficient use of single-track lines by sending information about traffic to oncoming trains.

The main thrust of the B&O was the race to reach the Ohio River and tap into the enormous freight market to and from the West. By the early 1850s rail lines had already been laid to Lake Erie. The Pennsylvania Railroad had reached Pittsburgh. The skilled B&O engineer Benjamin Latrobe, Jr., oversaw the completion of the 11 tunnels and 113 bridges needed to connect the final stretch of his line to Wheeling. The arrival of the first B&O train in that city on New Year’s Day 1853 brought a big boost in revenues.

Because it snaked through both Maryland and Virginia, the B&O became a source of contention during the Civil War. Confederate Col. Thomas J. Jackson, later known as Stonewall, regretted destroying the efforts of so much labor in 1861, writing, “It was a sad work; but I had my orders.” The Southerners confiscated locomotives and tore up tracks. Steel rails and prefabricated bridges speeded repairs as the line suffered repeated attacks throughout the conflict.

After the war, the company pushed the B&O across the Ohio. The first bridge, begun 1868, took more than three years to complete. About the same time, the B&O, already a major mover of coal, established a line to Pittsburgh and began to share in the bonanza of the burgeoning coke and iron industry there.

The line connected to Chicago in 1874, and the firm took over other lines to reach St. Louis by 1893. Like other major trunk lines, the B&O became noted for its luxurious passenger trains. Its Capitol Limited, from Chicago to Washington, carried notables from the Midwest to the nation’s capital for years.

By the end of the century, the B&O had laid or acquired 5,800 miles of track—and had gone bankrupt. The frenzy of railroad building in the second half of the nineteenth century had created a surplus of capacity that plagued the industry for decades. The company was reorganized and continued to operate.

In 1925 the B&O introduced its first diesel locomotive, and by the end of the 1940s steam engines were obsolete. Searching for economies during the 1950s, lines began a series of mergers. The Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad bought a controlling interest in the B&O in the early 1960s but continued to operate it as an independent line. Additional mergers produced the Chessie System in the 1970s and the CSX Corporation in the 1980s. In 1986 the B&O was absorbed into CSX, and its history ended. Many miles of B&O track were abandoned.

Over 180 years, the railroads have made a tremendous contribution to the national prosperity, and they remain today one of the most critical parts of our infrastructure. Though the B&O has disappeared (except on the Monopoly board) its historical importance cannot be diminished. It began it all.

—Jack Kelly writes often for American Heritage magazine and is the author of Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics—A History of the Explosive That Changed the World (Basic Books).