A horse railroad had been built from Philadelphia to the Susquehanna river, and the big Conestoga wagons were running along the pike to Pittsburg; but this was not enough. New York had stirred the whole country by its great canal, and the people along the Potomac were thinking of similar schemes. Pennsylvania could not rest idle, and decided to have a canal of its own.
In 1826 the ditch was begun at Columbia, where the railroad ended, and, following the custom of the times, those in charge started the work on Independence Day. In four years they had dug the canal, let in the water, and were running boats as far as Harrisburg.
A few miles above Harrisburg the canal turned away from the main river and followed its great western branch, the Juniata. This river cuts through the high ridges, or flows between them as best it can, taking a very winding course. The valley is often narrow and its sides are steep and rugged. Still it has no heavy grades along the bottom, and it led the canal diggers far into the mountains, to a village called Hollidaysburg.
Here the highlands are so steep that the canal had to stop. The Allegheny Front is almost fourteen hundred feet above Hollidaysburg, and on the other side the Conemaugh river rushes swiftly down past the city of Johnstown, which is seven hundred and seventy-one feet below the summit. Hollidaysburg and Johnstown are thirty-eight miles apart, and the uplands lying between are so steep and high that to cut through them was out of the question. But those who were interested in the canal were not to be beaten, and they kept on digging both to the east and to the west. Beyond Johnstown they carried the canal to the Ohio river at Pittsburg.
Meantime the high grounds on the divide were not neglected. A famous road, the Allegheny Portage Railway, was built with several inclined planes. Stationary engines pulled the cars up each slope, but on the level parts of the road they were drawn by horses.
The road was not carried to the top, but nearly two hundred feet below a tunnel was cut about a mile long. The entrance to one end of this tunnel is shown in Fig. 27.
The two great sections of the canal and the Portage Railway were finished in 1835. Goods then went by rail from Philadelphia to Columbia on the Susquehanna river. There the boats took them to the east end of the Portage road. The next haul was over the Allegheny Front, with its lofty forests, to Johnstown. Then the boats received the merchandise and landed it in Pittsburg, whence other boats could carry it to any town on the Ohio river.
The Hit or Miss was one of the boats that came up to Hollidaysburg. It was desirable to take this particular boat over the heights, so a car was built which would fit its keel. The car was dragged up the east side of the mountain and down to Johnstown, where the boat was put into the water again and sent off to the Mississippi river. We can now look across a gorge from the coaches of the Pennsylvania Railroad, beyond Altoona, and see the grade of the old Portage Railway.
The canal almost put out of business the Conestoga wagons on the dusty pike which had seen so much travel by way of Carlisle and Bedford. But the people did not stop with a canal. Like the men of New York, they wanted something even better than that. They wished to have a railroad all the way, and in 1846 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company was incorporated. By this time it was very well known that railroads were successful both in America and in England, and that steam was better than horses.
Over the Allegheny Front a route was found where the grades were not too steep for locomotives. The grade, of course, had been the one great hindrance to the whole project, and when this difficulty was overcome there was no reason why passengers should not be carried from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, or a load of iron from Pittsburg to Philadelphia, without changing cars. In the year 1854 the Pennsylvania people triumphed, for they had conquered the mountains and could run trains from the banks of the Delaware to the Ohio river.
If we leave Philadelphia by the great Broad street station of the Pennsylvania Railroad, we shall pass out among the pleasant homes of West Philadelphia and through the fine farms of the Pennsylvania lowlands, until we come, in about an hour and a half, to the staid old city of Lancaster. We have been here before, to learn of turnpikes and Conestoga freighters.
The next stop, if we are on an express train, will be at Harrisburg, a little more than a hundred miles from Philadelphia. We have now come from the Delaware to the Susquehanna, and are close to the mountains. Before we go in among them let us see Harrisburg. It is a city of fifty thousand people, and lies along the east bank of the Susquehanna, which here is a great river a mile wide, having gathered its tribute of waters from hundreds of branching streams in Pennsylvania and New York.
Not far to the east a small stream runs parallel to the main river, and the larger part of Harrisburg is on higher ground between the two. On the highest part of this ridge is the state capitol, a great building but recently finished. Harrisburg is at the right point for the state government. It is not in the center of the state, to be sure, but it is at the rear of the lowlands which reach in from the sea, and is just outside the great gateway where roads from all the northern, western, and central uplands come out on the plain. It is a convenient center for coal and iron, and hence one sees along the river below the city many blast furnaces, rolling mills, and factories. To the northeast rich, open lands stretch along the base of Blue mountain, and railroads join Harrisburg to Reading, Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton. To the southwest bridges cross the Susquehanna, and roads run to Carlisle, Hagerstown, and other cities of the Great Valley (Chapter XI).
Thus the Pennsylvania Railroad, running northwest from Philadelphia, crosses at Harrisburg other roads that run to the southwest. As hamlets often gather about “four corners” in the country, so cities grow up where the great roads of the world cross each other.
Leaving Harrisburg behind, we pass the splendid new bridge of the Pennsylvania Railroad, across the Susquehanna (Fig. 29), and go through the gap in Blue mountain. Soon we turn away from the main river and enter the winding valley of the Juniata. The grades are easy, the roadbed is smooth, and by deep cuts through the rocks the curves have been made less abrupt. It is only when one looks out of the car window that the land is found to be rugged and mountainous.
All the greater valleys and ridges of the mountain belt of Pennsylvania run northeast and southwest. The last of these to be crossed on our journey is Bald Eagle valley, from which the Allegheny Front rises to the northwest.
In this valley, near the place where the Portage Railway began to scale the heights, and a little more than a hundred miles from Pittsburg, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company in 1850 founded a town and called it Altoona. Here they started shops, which have now grown to notable importance. The town became a city eighteen years after it was begun, and has to-day about forty thousand inhabitants. In the railway shops alone may be found nine thousand men repairing and building locomotives, passenger coaches, and freight cars. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company is now founding a great school in Altoona, where young men may be taught to become skillful and efficient in railway service.
Altoona looks new, and with its endless freight yards, its noisy shops, and its sooty cover of smoke from burning soft coal, it is very different from quiet Lancaster, which was old when forests covered the site of Altoona.
On our way to Pittsburg we are soon pulling up the Allegheny Front by a great loop, or bend, which enables the tracks to reach the summit more than a thousand feet above Altoona. Nestling within the great bend is a reservoir of water to supply the houses and shops of the city lying below. Passing the highest point, we find ourselves descending the valley of the Conemaugh river to Johnstown, and surrounded by the high lands of the Allegheny plateau.
Johnstown is much older than Altoona, for it was settled in 1791, but it has not grown so fast, and has only about as many inhabitants as the city of railroad shops. Most people know of Johnstown because of the flood which ruined the place in 1889. Several miles above the town was a reservoir more than two miles long and in several places one hundred feet deep. After the heavy rains of that spring the dam broke on the last day of May, and the wild rush of waters destroyed the town. Homes, stores, shops, and mills were torn away and carried down the river. Clara Barton of the Red Cross, who went to Johnstown as soon as she could get there, says that the few houses that were not crushed and strewn along the valley were turned upside down.
More than two thousand men, women, and children lost their lives, and those that were left were in mourning and poverty. The whole land sent in its gifts of money, clothing, and food, and the town was built up again into a prosperous city. Near the city are found coal, iron, limestone, and fire clay, and these things make it easy to establish iron works. The Cambria Steel Company gives work to ten thousand men in its shops, mines, and furnaces.
The main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad runs down the rugged Conemaugh valley through Johnstown, and is its chief means of traffic. As we go on to the west we near Pittsburg, but first we pass through a number of stirring towns. At one place fire bricks are made, and the clay for molding them and the coal for burning them are found in the same hill. In another town there are coal mines and glass works. Farther west the Pennsylvania road has more repair shops, and Braddock is the great Carnegie town. We shall see why many thriving young cities have grown up in this region when we take up Pittsburg, about which they are all clustered.
At Pittsburg we pull into one of the finest railway stations in the United States. We may stop in the city of coal and iron, or we may go on to the west, over one of the main arms of the Pennsylvania Railroad system. If we take the northern branch, it will carry us across Ohio to Fort Wayne in Indiana and to Chicago. If we board a train on the southern arm, we shall go through Columbus and Indianapolis, and be set down on the farther side of the Mississippi river at St. Louis.
North and south from the great east and west trunk lines run many shorter roads, or “spurs.” On the east there is a network of short roads in New Jersey, and one of the busiest parts of the whole system is that which joins Washington to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York.
West from Philadelphia for a long distance there are four tracks, and on either side may be seen neat hedges, such as one finds along the railways of England. In the mountains it is often hard to make a roadbed wide enough for four tracks, and hence there may be only three or even two in some places. No doubt four will in time be built through to Pittsburg, for many millions of dollars are spent in improving the road. Instead of having a long circuit around the hills, tunnels and vast cuts in the bed rock are made so as to straighten the line. Thus both passenger and freight trains are able to make better time, and the road can carry the stores of iron and coal which are found in the lands on either side.
Some of the freight yards are always crowded with cars, and at Harrisburg the company is building separate tracks around the city, so that through freight trains need not be delayed.
At New York the Pennsylvania Railroad now has its station on the New Jersey side of the Hudson river, but it is building a tunnel under the river. The company has already bought several city blocks and has torn away the buildings. Here it will build one of the greatest passenger stations in the world. The tunnel will run on to the east, under the streets and shops of Manhattan, and under the East river. Thus under New York and its surrounding waters trains can go to the east end of Long Island.
Pennsylvania has told us the same story that we learned from New York. We read it again: first, how the Indian’s path was beaten deeper and wider by the hoofs of the pack horse, bearing goods to sell and barter in the wilderness; then how strips of forest were cut down to make room for the Conestoga wagons and the gay stages that swept through from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. These in their turn became old-fashioned when the canal and Portage Railway were done, and now we sit in a car that is like a palace, and think canals and Conestogas very old stories indeed. In future generations swift air ships may take the wonder away from the Empire State Express, and make us listen unmoved when a man, standing in the station at Philadelphia, calls the limited train for Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and St. Louis.