traffic in Northern Virginia
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From an 1888 report:
It will be seen that up to 1840 no continuous road of considerable length had been completed by any single company, and most of the mileage existing it the end of the fourth decade represented detached enterprises, which either served purely local purposes or acted as connecting links between natural or artificial water-courses The germ of great systems, however, had been established, and notably of the Pennsylvania, New York Central, and Baltimore and Ohio.... At the close of 1839 there was no extensive continuous internal improvement of a single given character and ownership extending through a number of states except the National road, a superior turnpike, which had been constructed by appropriations of the United States government, made during period of about thirty years. The only other extensive continuous systems under a single management were the New York canals and the main line and branches of the Pennsylvania system of internal improvements, which incidentally included two railways that were about 120 miles in length. But the necessary means for both these undertakings were obtained from state treasuries, and mainly through the proceed of the sale of state bonds. No private company up to that time possessed sufficient capital or credit to construct a continuous railway of considerable length, and in the absence of state aid it would then have been useless to attempt to build such lines. The longest route of continuous land travel, interspersed with occasional steamboat trips and staging, but made up largely of railway links, was on the great north and south mail route, extending from Boston to New Orleans, near the Atlantic seaboard and gulf of Mexico, but ambitious effort were then, as in all subsequent periods, generally directed to wards the improvement of lines and systems extending west ward, and the prominent competitors for western traffic, to be won by railway extensions included Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, and Savannah.1 |
Public and private investment in transportation shapes the patterns of economic growth in Virginia. It's worked that way since from colonial days to the present, but after the American Revolution it is even more obvious that public investments have shaped private profits. Modern decisions on where to locate and how to finance the Coalfields Expressway, Interstate 73, a new bridge over the Potomac River, high-speed rail lines, and a new airport for Hampton Roads/Richmond have historical precedents.
Think there's competition between advocates of mass transit and highway construction today? Ya shoulda seen the nasty debates between canal and railroad advocates in the 1830's. Think the Western Transportation Corridor is the most egregious example of a "developer's road" being constructed for the benefit of a few at the expense of the many? Think the competition between Virginia ports and Baltimore over Federal funding of dredging channels and improving the harbors is unusual? The debates today are genteel and logical, when compared to the extraordinary state commitment to building a canal along the James River or the financial sabotage - and then physical destruction - of the railroad connecting Hampton Roads with the Roanoke River.
As the old saying goes, "the more things change, the more they remain the same." The ethics and financial interests of individuals did help shape our transportation network; the personalities of leaders such as Joseph Carrington Cabell and Colis P. Huntington are key parts of the story. More fundamentally, however, there are sectional rivalries shaped by physical geography that would have emerged, no matter what sort of people settled in Virginia and no matter what sort of leaders they had chosen...
