Building Better Roads
Settlers faced difficult journeys as they traveled to the West. Many roads were narrow dirt trails, barely wide enough for a single wagon. Trails often plunged through muddy swamps. Tree stumps stuck up in the road and often broke the wagon axles of careless travelers. The nation badly needed better roads.
Paying Tolls In the United States, as in Europe, private companies built gravel and stone roads. To pay for these roads, the companies collected tolls from travelers. At various points along the road, a pike, or pole, blocked the road. After a wagon driver had paid a toll, the pike keeper turned the pole aside to let the wagon pass. As a result, these toll roads were called turnpikes.
Probably the best road in the United States was the Lancaster Turnpike. Built in the 1790s by a private company, the road linked Philadelphia and Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Because the road was set on a bed of gravel, water drained off quickly. For a smooth ride, the road was topped with flat stones.
Other roads were more primitive. In swampy areas, roads were made of logs. These roads were known as corduroy roads because the lines of logs looked like corduroy cloth. Corduroy roads kept wagons from sinking into the mud, but they made for a very noisy and bumpy ride.
The First National Road Some states set aside money to improve roads or build new ones. Meanwhile, in 1806, Congress approved funds for the first national road-building project. The National Road was to run from Cumberland, Maryland, to Wheeling, on the Ohio River in western Virginia.
Work on the National Road began in 1811. Because of the War of 1812, it was not completed until 1818. Later, the road was extended into Illinois. As each new section of road was built, settlers eagerly used it to drive their wagons farther and farther west.The Age of Steam
Whenever possible, travelers and freight haulers used river transportation. Floating downstream on a flatboat was both faster and more comfortable than bumping along rutted roads. It also cost a lot less.
Yet, river travel had its own problems. Moving upstream was difficult. People used paddles or long poles to push boats against the current. Sometimes, they hauled boats along the shore with ropes. Both methods were extremely slow. A boat could travel downstream from Pittsburgh to New Orleans in about six weeks. However, the return trip upstream took at least 17 weeks.
Steamboats Arrive Americans worked hard to develop new kinds of boats that would make river travel faster and cheaper. A new invention, the steam engine, started a new era in river travel. In 1787, John Fitch showed members of the Constitutional Convention how a steam engine could power a boat. He then opened a ferry service on the Delaware River. However, few people used the ferry, and Fitch eventually went out of business.
Inventor Robert Fulton may have seen Fitch's steamboat while in Philadelphia. In 1807, Fulton launched his own steamboat, the Clermont, on the Hudson River. On its first run, the Clermont carried passengers from New York City to Albany and back. The 300-mile trip took just 62 hours—a record at the time.
A Travel Revolution Fulton's success ushered in the age of steamboats. Soon, steamboats were ferrying passengers up and down the Atlantic coast. More important, steamboats revolutionized travel in the West. Besides carrying people, river steamboats gave farmers and merchants a cheap means of moving goods.Steamboats and better roads brought many improvements to transportation. But they did not help western farmers get their goods directly to markets in the East. To meet this need, Americans needed to modify the physical environment in a whole new way: they dug canals. A canal is an artificial channel filled with water that allows boats to cross a stretch of land.
The earliest American canals were no more than a few miles long. Some canals provided routes around waterfalls on a river. Others linked rivers to nearby lakes. By the early 1800s, however, Americans were building longer canals.
The Erie Canal In 1805, some New Yorkers developed a bold idea. They wanted to build a canal linking the Great Lakes to the Mohawk and Hudson rivers. Later known as the Erie Canal, this artificial waterway would let western farmers ship their goods to the port of New York. It would also bring business to towns along the route.Locks allow canal boats to rise in steps. When a boat enters a lock chamber, the lower gates close, the upper gates open, and water flows into the chamber, raising the boat.
To many people, the idea of such a canal seemed far-fetched. When Thomas Jefferson heard of the plan, he exclaimed:
Why, sir, you talk of making a canal 350 miles through the wilderness—it is little short of madness to think of it at this day!
—Thomas Jefferson to Joshua Forman of New York, 1809
New York's governor DeWitt Clinton ignored such criticism. He persuaded state lawmakers to provide money for the Erie Canal. Critics referred to the project as “Clinton's Ditch.”
Work on the Erie Canal began in 1817. At first, thousands of workers dug the waterway using hand tools. To speed up progress, inventors developed new equipment.Early construction of the Erie Canal used teams of men working with hand tools, oxen, and horses. This was slow work. It took an entire year to complete a single mile.
One machine, a stump-puller, could pull out nearly 40 tree stumps a day. In two places, the canal had to cross over rivers. Workers built stone bridges to carry the canal over the rivers.
After reading the text answer this question Explain how transportation such as roads, steamboats, and canals improved also your answer needs to be 4 sentences long