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homecanal the 19
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 * < Travel in the early nineteenth century was so much slower and more difficult than it is today that it is not easy to remember that it was also a time of significant change and improvement. In New England in 1790, vehicles were few, roads were generally rutted and rudimentary, and traveling any distance was both slow and difficult. Children and poorer adults walked everywhere, and only a minority of farmers had horses and wagons. Many loads of freight were drawn not by horses but by much slower-moving oxen. With a good horse, it took from four to six days, depending on the weather, to travel from Boston to New York. And this was on the best roads, which ran between major cities along the coast. Inland, the roads were even worse, turning to impassable mud when it rained or to choking dust when the weather was dry.But beginning around 1790, a series of changes was beginning that historians have called “The Transportation Revolution.” Americans—and New Englanders in particular—rebuilt and vastly extended their roads. More than 3,700 miles of turnpikes, or toll roads, were built in New England between 1790 and 1820. Continuing through the 1840s, many thousands of miles of improved county and town roads were constructed as well. The new roads were far better constructed and maintained, and allowed for much faster travel. In response, the number of vehicles on the roads increased rapidly, far faster than population. It was noted in 1830 that Americans were driving a “multitudinous generation of travelling vehicles” that had been “totally unknown” in the 1790s. Stagecoach lines had spread across the Northeastern states, using continual relays, or “stages,” of fresh horses spaced out every 40 miles or so. They made travel, if not enjoyable, at least faster, less expensive, and less perilous than it had ever been. The 1830s had reduced the travel time between Boston and New York to a day and a half. Good roads and stages extended across southern New England, the lower Hudson Valley in New York, and southeastern Pennsylvania“There is more travelling [in the United States] than in any part of the world,” an article in the Boston American Traveler claimed in 1828. “Here, the whole population is in motion, whereas, in old countries, there are millions who have never been beyond the sound of the parish bell.” The editor of the same paper remarked two years later that whereas in 1786 it had taken as long as six days to travel by stage from Boston to New York, now the trip was made easily in only a day and a half. “Who will undertake to predict the wonderful results of the next half century?” he wondered.Aside from the fact that his paper was dedicated to the interests of the coaching business, the editor had good reason for looking forward to another fifty years of improvement and growth in highway travel. Except for its navigable rivers and a handful of canals, the interior of New England in 1830 still was traversed only by a network of dirt and gravel roads. As in other parts of the country, there had been a flurry of excitement over canals during the 1820s following the initial success of New York’s Erie Canal. Only a few canals were built in New England, however, and despite the fact that the canal companies promised to reduce transportation costs, teamsters had been able to compete with them by selectively cutting their own charges and by offering services the canal companies were unable to duplicate. Agitation for railroads also had begun during the 1820s; Massachusetts chartered the Boston and Lowell in 1830. But claims that railroads would revolutionize transportation, although frequently made, remained to be proved ||<  ||<   ||