Railroads

Railroads shaped the growth of 19th-century urban America. The quality of rail connections helped determine whether cities flourished or stagnated. Within urban areas railroad facilities such as tracks, switching yards, depots, and junctions shaped the urban landscape both in their own right and as magnets for commercial, industrial, and residential development. In the largest cities, rail passenger service gave rise to commuting, which in turn led to suburbanization, particularly within walking distance of railroad stations.

The components of railroad technology, such as flanged wheels operating on tracks, originated in Europe as early as the Middle Ages, but it was not until 19th-century England that they were brought together with iron rails and steam locomotives to form the modern passenger and freight-hauling railroad. The first, the Stockton and Darlington Railway, opened in 1825. Railroads spread quickly to the United States, the Baltimore and Ohio breaking ground in 1828 and starting service two years later. By 1835, Boston was served by rail lines to Lowell, Worcester, and Providence and became the nation's first rail hub. In the late 1850s and early 1860s the new city of Chicago became the center of the national rail network, a distinction it has maintained ever since.

Railroads expanded spectacularly during the 19th century. As early as 1840 the United States had 2,800 miles of rail lines in operation, already more than twice that of Great Britain. The number climbed to more than 30,000 by 1860 and 166,000 in 1890. At first most railroad companies were local affairs, with lines connecting nearby cities, and the lack of standardization (particularly track gauge) discouraged interchanging equipment and the development of through passenger and freight service. By the end of the 19th century, however, widespread standardization of freight and passenger cars had produced a truly national transportation system connecting virtually every city and town in the country (and Canada as well). Single companies now operated trains between the coasts and Chicago.

Wherever a convergence of railway lines occurred, growth followed. Existing ports, such as New York, Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis, greatly increased in population and size after the railroads arrived. But the most spectacular growth took place in new cities such as Chicago, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and Los Angeles, places that might well have remained villages without railroads. For every Chicago there were hundreds of smaller communities whose growth had also been fueled by rail transportation. Shippers sought out locations served by multiple railroads, since competition lowered rates at these points.

Within cities railroads created a unique new landscape of tracks and yards, depots, bridges, cuts and fills, roundhouses, signal towers, freight houses, and grain elevators, which in turn attracted private and municipal development. Factories, warehouses, coal and grain dealers, lumberyards, and stockyards all found it advantageous to locate trackside, prompting the workers who served those industries (and their families) to seek housing nearby. In many cities busy rail lines were eventually elevated onto embankments (or more rarely, depressed) to avoid numerous grade crossings. The tracks formed barriers that came to define socioeconomic neighborhoods and ethnic/racial boundaries: “the other side of the tracks” became a euphemism for the slums.

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