The Great Road: The Building of the Baltimore and Ohio, the Nation’s First Railroad, 1828-1853
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.15 (991 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0804726299 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 496 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-06-22 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
George Peabody, Enoch Pratt, William Walters, and Johns Hopkins—the city's most prominent philanthropists—were involved with the B&O, some intimately; the Johns Hopkins University was founded on B&O Railroad stock. Railroads, and certainly the B&O, epitomized progress, not only in the development and extension of the Western frontier but in the revelation that personal travel and the delivery of freight could be dramatically faster, better, and cheaper.The railroad deeply affected the development of Baltimore's port, industry, and urban geography, as well as its financial, educational, and cultural institutions. Its successful inauguration provided a spur to internal improvements throughout the United States. This masterful, richly illustrated account of the planning and building of the most important and influential early American railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio, is an essential contribution not only to railyway history but also to the broader history of the development of the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century.There was no precedent for the building of the B&O. The B&O also contributed by aiding in the growth of the state's iron and coal industries.The B&O came to be called "the Railroad University of the United States." Its civil engineers formed the core of the railroad engineering profession in America
From Booklist After independence, the Appalachian Mountains just as imposingly barred the way of infant capitalism as they had, in the colonial era, formed political limits. A major social undertaking, celebrated by civic pomp as various sections opened, the B & O was a reified metaphor for the age's idea of Progress. Dilts recounts all aspects of surveying, civil engineering, steam locomotion, and labor. And the impediment called forth construction schemes--of turnpikes, canals, then railroads--each favored in turn by the competing cities of Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore. The latter city's financiers of the 1820s settled on the newfangled iron horse to connect their entrep{"ot with the Ohio River valley, and here is a comprehensive account of the legendary B & O, which took 25 years to build across Maryland's rugged
BAltimore and Ohio Railroad Kyle F. Mcgrogan Mr. Dilts has created a seminal, readable history on the construction of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad from Baltimore to the Ohio River at Wheeling, (W)Va 1828-1852, the Nineteenth Century's version of the race to the moon. Some of the contractors and politicians are ones you'll meet with today in the news, just under different names, but the character stays the same.. "This book fills a great need for a detailed history on the building of" according to Cassandrus. This book fills a great need for a detailed history on the building of the great line west to the Ohio by the nation's first railroad. Finally, I get the correct story about my great great grandfather's death -- in the first American railroad accident to kill passengers.. "Great book on the "Great Road"." according to Thomas W. Spradlin Jr.. This book gave me great insight into the building of the early railroads and why the picked the routes they did.