The Transportation Revolution: Roads, Canals, and Railroads | A Biography of America
The Panic of 1819 alerted many to the need for more effective transportation of goods. Most rivers west of the Appalachians ran north to south, so they could not connect western farmers with the eastern markets where their goods were sold. The National Road was the primary connection between east and west, and it advanced further west each year. In addition, between 1815 and 1825 seven northern states built toll roads, or turnpikes. However, this did not solve the problem of transportation.
Horse-drawn wagons had very limited capacity and roads were very expensive to maintain. Thus, interest turned toward the concept of water transportation. In 1807, Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston introduced the first steamboat, known as the Clermont, on the Hudson River. Steamboats quickly caught on and became the preferred mode of water transportation. Between 1817 and 1820 the number of steamboats in America jumped from 17 to 69, and by 1855, the number had reached 727. Before the advent of
the steamboat, flatboats, sometimes little more than rafts, carried goods down the Mississippi River. There, the boats were broken up and sold as firewood because they could not make the trip back upstream. The return voyage was then made on foot or horseback. Keelboats, like flatboats except in that they had a rudder, could make the return journey upstream, but progress was extremely slow. Steamboats moved about four times as fast as keelboats upstream. The speed and versatility of the
steamboat, augmented by a number of important functional improvements made over the years, established the steamboat an indispensable method of trade for all seasons. Recommended textbook solutions
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