Traveling Tuesday: Train Travel in the 1870s

Traveling Tuesday: Travel in the 1870s

Pixabay/Ellen

After decades of traversing the American continent over bumpy roads by horse-drawn covered wagon or stagecoach, the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869 slashed travel time from months to mere days. Long forgotten are the more than 20,000 Irish-American Civil War Veterans, freed slaves, Mormon pioneers, and Chinese laborers, who performed the back-breaking work. Estimates vary as to the project’s cost, but it was exorbitant: somewhere above $60 million (or $1.2 billion in today’s money). An additional cost was the more than 1,200 lives lost in the process of building the railroad.

James Meigs, senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal, likened the transcontinental railroad to the internet of the 19th century. An excellent analogy considering that the railroad created the opportunity to communicate and conduct commerce over great distances. Much like the internet, the railroad transformed the economy of the time.

The first passenger train on the like took 102 hours to travel from Omaha, Nebraska to San Francisco,

Pixabay/Brigitte Werner

and a first-class ticket cost $134.50 – about $2,700 today. Using the Overland Route, the train went across prairies, mountains, and deserts, exposing East Coast travelers to visions they’d never imagined. Celia Cooley Graves from Massachusetts wrote in 1875 “For hundreds of miles we saw no other persons except now and then a station with a few hovels about it.”

Mimicking ocean travel that transported millions of immigrants to the US and offered different fares for different classes, the railroads implemented a system of three classes. Third-class passengers paid half of what first-class passengers did to sit on benches and bring their own food. Second-class passengers had it a bit better in that their seats were upholstered.

Courtesy National Park Service

Those who could afford first-class traveled in opulent style with access to sleepers, dining cars, and parlor cars that were lavishly decorated and included brocade curtains or silk shades, chandeliers, plush upholstery, walls covered in dark walnut, velvet hangings, gilt-framed mirrors, and brass fixtures.

Historian Amy G. Richter made an interesting observation about George Pullman’s elaborate palace and the impact they had on women: the train cars’ home-like setting and the presence of women in the living-room-like cars legitimized train travel for {single} women and soothed those who feared that public life would endanger women and the moral order.

Eventually, railroad tracks crisscrossed the United States providing the opportunity to travel from coast to coast no matter what their economic status.

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Beryl’s Bounty Hunter

Can a thief and a lawman find happiness?

Orphaned as a child, Beryl Atherton has lived on the streets of London as long as she can remember. Reduced to stealing for survival, she is arrested. During her incarceration one of her cellmates shows her a newspaper ad for an American mail-order bride agency. But all is not as it seems, and moments after landing in Boston, she must run for her life. Will things be no different for her in the New World?

Working as a bounty hunter since The War Between the States, Lucas Wolf just needs a few more cases before he can hang up his gun, purchase a ranch out West, and apply for a mail-order bride from the Westward Home & Hearts Mail-Order Bride Agency. While staking out the docks in Boston, he sees a woman fleeing from the man he’s been tailing. Saving her risks his job. Not saving her risks his heart.

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Traveling Tuesday: 19th Century Travel

Traveling Tuesday: 19th Century Travel 

 

Until the recent pandemic, most people took travel for granted. Jumping into the family vehicle or on a plane for a quick getaway was done without a lot of forethought. Living on the east coast, I can get to numerous states in just a handful of hours. 

 

Two hundred years ago, travel was much slower and more difficult. Roads were generally rutted and rudimentary, muddy quagmires when it rained, and choking dust trails when dry. Vehicles were few. Children and poorer adults walked everywhere, and only the more successful farmers had horses and wagons. Most freight was moved by oxen-driven carts. A trip from Boston to New York by horse could take four to six days, depending on weather (and that was on some of the best roads that ran between major cities). 

 

Between 1790 and 1820, “The Transportation Revolution,” occurred. Roads were rebuilt and extended. Over 3,700 miles of turnpikes (toll roads) were constructed in New England alone. Through the 1840s, country and town roads were also improved. As a result of the ability for faster travel with these better roads, the number of vehicles on the roads increased. Stagecoach lines spread across the Northeast, the name coming from the concept of using continual relays or “stages” of fresh horses spaced out every forty miles or so. Not necessarily more enjoyable, the stagecoaches averaged eight to nine miles an hour which reduced travel time. 

 

By the early 1800s, the use of steam became an emerging technology used in railroads, boats, and the

building of canals – all designed to move goods, produced and passengers. Although dangerous because of potential fires and explosions, steamboats could run on tight schedules with greater speed than overland means of travel, and became popular in a short time. 

 

The British had developed a system of canals decades earlier, but the Americans didn’t begin their infrastructure until the mid-1800s. The Erie Canal, in particular, was a great success among the American canals. Crossing the breadth of New York to connect Albany and Buffalo in 1825, it opened up the agricultural hinterland for trade with New York City and England. 

Train lines began to develop in the 1830s, with small locomotives that pulled a handful of cars over uneven track. Traveling fifteen to twenty miles per hour, train speed was twice as fast as anything Americans had experienced to date. However, most lines ran between large cities, most of them concentrated in the Northeast. Travel between New York City and Boston took less than a day using a combination of rail and steamboat. 

The first transcontinental railroad would not be completed until 1869, so westward expansion which began in the 1820s was done primarily by “prairie schooner,” large canvas-covered wagons that resembled the ocean-going vessels of the same name. A journey from the Atlantic Ocean (the eastern border of the U.S) to the western territories took months, and travelers carried as many supplies as they could, supplementing their food by hunting or foraging along the trail. 

I’ll try to remember that the next time I complain about the snacks served during an airline trip. 

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Gold Rush Bride Hannah

A brand-new widow, she’s doesn’t need another man in her life. He’s not looking for a wife. But when danger thrusts them together, will they change their minds...and hearts? 

 

Hannah Lauman’s husband has been murdered, but rather than grief, she feels...relief. She decides to remain in Georgia to work their gold claim, but a series of incidents makes it clear someone wants her gone...dead or alive. Is a chance at being a woman of means and independence worth risking her life? 

 

Jess Vogel never breaks a promise, so when he receives a letter from a former platoon mate about being in danger, he drops everything to help his old friend. Unfortunately, he arrives just in time for the funeral. Can he convince the man’s widow he’s there for her protection not for her money? 

 

Gold Rush Bride: Hannah is the first book in the exciting new series Gold Rush Brides. Steeped in romance, intrigue, and history, the story will keep you turning pages long into the night.

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