# Historic Highways of America/Volume 13/Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV
THE PENNSYLVANIA CANAL AND ITS SUCCESSOR
THE great early trade route through Pennsylvania in the days of the pack-horse and "Conestoga" wagon has been outlined in previous volumes of this series. By means of Forbes's Road the metropolis of the United States at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Philadelphia, was in close connection with the metropolis of the Ohio Basin, Pittsburg. The rivalry with Baltimore had been keen, and the Philadelphia merchants were eager to overcome their handicap of nearly one hundred miles, by internal improvements of a most advanced pattern. In the matter of roads, liberal as had been Pennsylvania's policy, Maryland was far ahead, so far as the West was concerned. And in 1806, when a national road across ​the Alleghenies was proposed, and a Maryland (Cumberland) route was chosen by the commissioners appointed by President Jefferson, it seemed probable that Maryland's lead in the matter of trade was about to be materially increased.
But Pennsylvania, as we have seen, had been an early promoter of inland navigation; its "Society for promoting the improvement of roads and inland navigation" in 1791, had called specific attention to the rivers which should be made important routes of an expanding commerce. Among the most important recommendations of this society was that looking to the improvement of Pennsylvania's great western waterway, the Susquehanna River and its tributary, the Juniata. This latter stream interlocked, beyond the Allegheny crest, with the roaring Conemaugh, a tributary of the Kiskiminitas and Ohio. And in response to this appeal we have seen that £5,250 was appropriated to the improvement of Susquehanna navigation from Wright's Ferry to the mouth of Swatara Creek. As Philadelphia was the commercial center, the route thence by water ​was first up the Schuylkill, then across by canal to the Susquehanna. It was outlined as follows in the society's memorial, signed by Robert Morris, February 7, 1791:
The progress of Virginia and Maryland in connection with the Potomac Company and the opening of the Potomac River was felt in Pennsylvania at this time. "For, ​in the first place," read this memorial, "if we turn our view to the immense territories connected with the Ohio and Mississippi waters, and bordering on the great lakes, it will appear from the tables of distances, that our communication with those vast countries (considering Fort Pitt as the port of entrance upon them) is as easy and may be rendered as cheap, as to any other port on the Atlantic tide waters. The distance from Philadelphia to the Allegheny, at the mouth of Kiskeminetas, is nearly the same as from the mouth of Monongahela to George Town on Potomac; and supposing the computed distances from Pittsburgh to the Dunkard Bottom to be just, and the navigation of Cheat river, on the one hand, and the Potomack, at the mouth of Savage river, on the other, to be, at all seasons of the year, equal to the navigation of the Kiskeminetas, Conemaugh and Juniata; yet as the portage from Dunkard Bottom to the Potomack, at the mouth of Savage river, is thirty-seven miles and a quarter, and the portage from Conemaugh to Juniata only eighteen miles (which may be considerably shortened by ​locks) there can be no doubt but that the transportation of all kinds of goods and merchandize from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh may be at a much cheaper rate than from any other sea port on the Atlantic waters."
It mattered not where it was, every one of the Atlantic seaboard cities had an expert who could show in black and white that that particular port was in closest touch with Pittsburg and the West. Washington had done so, conclusively to all Southerners; Morris does it here to the satisfaction of Pennsylvanians, and New York had a score of mathematicians who could prove the same thing concerning New York, and the Hudson and Mohawk route.
"This is not mentioned," continues the memorial, hopefully, "with a view to disparage the internal navigation of our sister states, more especially Maryland and Virginia. We admire their noble exertions. . . But, although a considerable part of the settlers on the Ohio waters may be accommodated by the Potomack navigation, and the state of Pennsylvania ​may only have a share in the trade of those waters; yet there remains to us the immense trade of the lakes, taking Presqu'Isle, which is within our own state, as the great mart or place of embarkation."
It is exceedingly interesting to note that while Pennsylvania at this time only expected to share with her southern neighbors the trade of the Ohio Basin, she expected a monopoly of the trade on the Great Lakes. Of the latter trade she secured only a fraction, while of the former she secured practically a monopoly for half a century.
The route is more carefully outlined in the memorial: "It connects Philadelphia with Pittsburgh and all the Ohio waters, by the Schuylkill, the Swatara and Juniata branches of Susquehanna, and the Kiskeminetas branch of Allegheny, with the distance of five hundred and sixty-one miles and an half . . and also Philadelphia and Presqu'Isle, using the same waters . . to the mouth of Kiskeminetas, and then by the easy waters of Allegheny and French Creek. In this whole communication to ​Pittssburgh, there are only eighteen miles portage between the Juniata and Conemaugh . . and only the addition of fifteen miles and an half more at the portage from Le Bœuf to Presqu'Isle, which portage is, likewise, included in both the other communications. In this statement of portages, it is supposed that the canal or lock navigation between the heads of Tulpehocken and Quitipahilla, is to be compleated; but if that work should be thought too great to begin with, it will be only the addition of four miles portage, by an excellent and level road."
For many years the problem of the navigation of this westward waterway was the subject of discussion and legislation. In no case does any state seem to have profited by the experience of any other. New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland each boldly attacked the problem of the improvement of their rivers, the Mohawk, Juniata, and Potomac, without in the least profiting by the experience of the others. It was New York which first broke away from the old ideas, upon which millions of dollars had been squandered, ​and built her Erie Canal, which soon turned doubt and derision into a vast tumult of applause. Yet it must be remembered that the New York canal had an easy path to follow. The Mohawk was not the wild Potomac as known in bleak Hampshire County, nor Wood Creek the racing Conemaugh or upper Youghiogheny. The wet flats of the "Genesee Country" offered a different prospect for canal engineers from that to be viewed in Kittanning Gorge where only the eagles lived. The Erie Canal conquered, by means of locks, 500 feet in 360 miles; the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal faced the problem of overcoming 2754 feet in 340 miles, and the Pennsylvania Canal, 2291 feet in 320 miles. It is not to be wondered at, then, that New York found a water connection with the West first. And yet the fact remains that much was spent on the Mohawk before the Erie Canal was begun.
So the struggle went on in Pennsylvania for nearly a generation until at last the success of the Erie Canal and the failure of the improved unnavigable rivers gave birth ​to the Pennsylvania Canal. On March 27, 1824, an act of the Pennsylvania legislature authorized the appointment of a board of canal commissioners to view and explore routes for a canal from Harrisburg to Pittsburg. The commissioners, Colonel Jacob Holgate, James Clark, and Charles Treziyulney, were appointed March 31. From May until December they were in the field. Their exploration resulted in the following estimate of the height to be overcome between the Susquehanna and Ohio:
​The tunnel at summit level was as long as that one proposed on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, and gave rise to great discussion. One commissioner, Treziyulney, whose name gave weight to his opinion, disagreed with his associates on the matter of the tunnel, and, in fact, on the entire canal proposition. The majority report having been made to the governor of Pennsylvania February 2, 1825, this minority report was dated February 21. "In short," it read, "the whole country, from the upper forks of the Juniata to the forks of the South branch of the Conemaugh, is mountainous; mountain rising after mountain in quick succession. The main one where the proposed tunnel is to pass, is hemmed in and surrounded by other high mountains, with steep slopes separated from one another by narrow ravines and presenting no favorable situation for canaling, either by lockage or tunneling. Here nature has refused to make her usual kind advances to aid the exertions of man; mountains are thrown together, as if to defy human ingenuity, and baffle the skill of the engineer." The ​difference of opinion caused much debate and conjecture as to the practicability of the great plan.
Another cause of delay was the agitation which was now sweeping all thinking minds on the question of the new roads of (literally) iron and steam as a motive power. Such had been the progress of railways in England that it was believed by many that this method of locomotion would supersede all others. On February 5, 1825, the Pennsylvania senate granted the wish of the advocates of railways by appointing a commission to inquire into the possibility of building a railway from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. Three editions of a pamphlet, Facts and Arguments in favor of adopting railways in preference to Canals in the State of Pennsylvania, were published in Philadelphia this year. It maintained that a railway could be built from Philadelphia to Pittsburg in one-third the time it would take to build a canal and at one-third the cost; it would, moreover, be available almost the entire year, whereas the Erie Canal was navigable only two hundred and twenty days in the year. It urged that ​more persons would be required in the operation of a canal than a railway, and that the tolls would be higher on the former than on the latter. "If a railway, or even a canal, existed between Pittsburg and Philadelphia, New Orleans would not requite the consideration of a moment. The great distance of this port from Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania; in winter the ice in the Ohio river . . the numerous sawyers, snags &c. . . the length of the voyage . . are powerful objections to this port. . . Baltimore presents itself as the second rival. . . But when the Pennsylvania railway shall be constructed, Baltimore cannot for a moment withstand the competition of the enormous capital of Philadelphia. She may, indeed, construct a canal or a railway . . but little is to be apprehended, as the length and expense of constructing these works will be far greater than those contemplated in Pennsylvania. New York is the third rival . . but the communication between New York and Pittsburg must be effected by a long, tedious, and expensive ​voyage, requiring four changes of vessels. . . The route of nearly 800 miles [via Buffalo, Lake Erie, and the Allegheny River] will be very circuitous; and will be impracticable five months every year. . . It does not require the voice of prophecy to predict that the period is not far distant when the New York canal will be superseded by a railway."
Thus was the question of rivalry between the Atlantic ports stated by a railway exponent of 1825; and the statements must be considered extremely prophetic. The railway commission was appointed too far ahead of the times, but it had a forward influence, and by the act of April 11, the canal commissioners were authorized to have all routes across the Alleghenies surveyed, and in June of the year following the Juniata route was announced to be the preferable route in the commission's report to the governor of Pennsylvania; the tunnel, however, was considered impossible for the same reason as with the tunnel between the heads of Savage and Youghiogheny Rivers in western Virginia—the ​difficulty of supplying water at the summit level. In the place of a tunnel, inclined planes were proposed by the commission.
Evidently anticipating this report, the Pennsylvania legislature passed an act for the construction of the Pennsylvania Canal at the expense of the state; and it was approved by Governor Shulze, February 25, 1826. It read:
Whereas, The construction of a canal within our own limits, for the purpose of connecting the eastern and western waters, is believed to be practicable, and within the means of the state, and its speedy completion will advance the prosperity, and elevate the character of Pennsylvania, and by facilitating intercourse, and promoting social interests, will strengthen the bands of the Union; And whereas, There are important sections of the work which may be immediately begun without the danger of error:
​Therefore,
Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in General Assembly met, That the commissioners appointed by the act, entitled, "An act to appoint a board of canal commissioners," passed the 11th April, 1825, are hereby authorized and empowered, in behalf of this state, immediately to locate and contract for making a canal, and locks, and other works necessary thereto, from the river Swatara to the mouth of the river Juniata, and also from Pittsburg to the mouth of the Kiskiminetas.
Section 2. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That the said commissioners shall be authorized to appoint one or two of the board, as occasion may require, as acting commissioner or commissioners, who shall receive —— dollars per day, while actually engaged in the superintendence of the works contemplated by this act.
Section 3. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That the said board shall appoint a treasurer, and shall have power to appoint engineers, clerks, and ​other officers, toll-gatherers, and such other agents as they shall judge requisite, and to agree for, and settle their respective wages, and to establish reasonable toll. Provided, That the treasurer shall give bond in such penalty, and with such security, as the said board shall direct, for the true and faithful discharge of the trust reposed in him.
Section 4. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That the location and dimensions of the said canals and locks shall be determined by a majority of the board, with the approbation of a skilful engineer, and with the consent of the Governor.
Map of Pennsylvania Canal and Portage Railway
​county in which such land shall be, the said justice of the peace shall issue his warrant, under his hand, to the sheriff of the county, to summon a jury of eighteen inhabitants of his county, not related to the parties, or in any manner interested, to meet on the land to be valued, at a day to be expressed in the warrant, not less than ten nor more than twenty days thereafter; and the sheriff, upon receiving the said warrant, shall forthwith summon the said jury, and when met, shall administer an oath or affirmation to every juryman who shall appear, being not less than twelve in number, that he will faithfully, justly and impartially value the land, and all damages the owner shall sustain by cutting the canal through such land, or the partial or temporary appropriation, use or occupation of such land, according to the best of his skill and judgment, and that in such valuation he will not spare any person, for favor or affection, or any person grieve for malice, hatred or ill will; and in every such valuation and assessment of damages, the jury shall be, and they are hereby instructed to consider in determin​ing and fixing the amount thereof, the actual benefit which will accrue to the owner, from conducting the said canal through, or erecting any of the said works upon his land, and to regulate their verdict thereby, except that no assessment shall require any such owner to pay or contribute any thing where such benefit shall exceed, in the estimate of the jury, the value and damages ascertained as aforesaid; and the inquisition thereupon taken, shall be signed by the sheriff, and some twelve or more of the jury, and returned by the sheriff to the clerk or prothonotary of his county, and unless good cause be shown against the said inquisition, it shall be affirmed by the court and recorded; but if the said inquisition should be set aside, or if from any cause, no inquisition shall be returned to such court within a reasonable time, the said court may at its discretion, as often as may be necessary, direct another inquisition to be taken in the manner above described, and upon every such valuation, the jury is hereby directed to describe and ascertain the bounds of the land by them valued, and the quality and ​duration of the interest and estate in the same, required by the said board for the use of the state, and their valuation shall be conclusive on all persons, and shall be paid for by the said board, to the owner of the land, or his legal representatives; and on payment thereof, the state shall be seized of such lands, as of an absolute estate in perpetuity, or with such less quantity and duration of interest or estate in the same, or subject to such partial or temporary appropriation, use or occupation as shall be required and described as aforesaid, as if conveyed by the owner, and whenever, in the construction of the said canal, or any of the works thereof, locks, dams, ponds, feeders, tunnels, aqueducts, culverts, bridges or works of any other description whatsoever appurtenant thereto, it shall be necessary to use earth, timber, stone or gravel, or any other material to be found on any of the lands adjacent or near thereto, and the said board or their agent cannot procure the same for the works aforesaid, by private contract of the proprietor or owner, or in case the owner should be a feme covert, non compos, or ​under age, or out of the state or county, the same proceedings in all respects shall be had as in the case before mentioned, of the assessment and condemnation of the lands required for the said canal, or the works appurtenant thereto.
Section 6. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That every person actually engaged in labouring on any canal authorized by law, shall be exempt from doing militia duty in this state, except in cases of insurrection or invasion, during the time when he is so actually engaged; and the certificates of the contractor who shall employ such men, so liable to perform militia duty, in the performance of their contracts shall be prima facia evidence of such engagement.
Section 7. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That the sum of three hundred thousand dollars be, and the same is hereby appropriated, to be paid by the state treasurer, in such sums as shall be required for the execution of the work, which sums shall from time to time be paid into the hands of the treasurer of the board ​by direction of a majority of the board, and by warrant of the Governor.
The method of joining the two divisions of what now became known as the Pennsylvania Canal was left undecided, pending further investigation. But an act of March 24, 1828 authorized the location and construction of the Juniata division, from Lewistown to the highest practicable point on the river. Eventually Hollidaysburg on the eastern slope of the Alleghenies, and Johnstown, on the western, were decided upon as the termini of the eastern and western divisions of the canal. The thirty-six miles intervening were to be crossed by a railway, through Blair's Gap, of the inclined planes previously suggested.
The interminable delays and postponements which have been described on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal were unknown in the present instance. What was known as the central division (there being really no eastern, though the Union Canal was such nominally) was begun at Columbia on the eastern shore of the Susquehanna, July ​4, 1826, and was opened to Duncan's Island, above Harrisburg, in 1830. This central section also extended across the Susquehanna and up the Juniata Valley; it was begun in 1827 and completed to Huntingdon in 1830 and Hollidaysburg in 1834. The western division of the canal extended from Pittsburg to Johnstown; it was begun in 1826 and opened in 1830.
From Huntingdon on the east to Johnstown on the west of the mountains was planned the Allegheny Portage Railroad, which from any point of view must be considered one of the most interesting and remarkable of all attempts to abridge distance in our early history.
The history of the divisions of the Pennsylvania Canal on either side of the mountains is commonplace beside this interesting and daring bit of engineering. Inclined planes were not, at this time, a novelty, but their use as proposed now in the Alleghenies was ​such an advance on former instances that it was considered a bold experiment. The Morris Canal between the Hudson and Delaware "is peculiar," wrote the British engineer Stevenson, in 1837, "as being the only canal in America in which the boats are moved from different levels by means of inclined planes instead of locks. The whole rise and fall on the Morris Canal is 1557 feet, of which 223 feet are overcome by locks, and the remaining 1334 feet by means of twenty-three inclined planes, having an average lift of 58 feet each. . . The car [on which canal boats ascend and descend] . . consists of a strongly made wooden crib or cradle . . on which the boat rests, supported on two iron waggons running on four wheels. When the car is wholly supported on the inclined plane, or is resting on the level, the four axles of the waggons are all in the same plane . . ; but when one of the wagons rests on the inclined plane, and the other on the level surface, their axles no longer remain in the same plane, and their change of position produces a tendency to rock the cradle, and the boat which it sup​ports; but this has been guarded against in the construction of the boat-cars on the Morris Canal by introducing two axles . . on which the whole weight of the crib and boat are supported, and on which the waggons turn as a centre. The cars run on plate rails laid on the inclined planes, and are raised and lowered by means of machinery driven by water wheels. . . The railway, on which the car runs, extends along the bottom of the canal for a short distance from the lower extremity of the plane; when a boat is to be raised, the car is lowered into the water, and the boat being floated over it, is made fast to the part of the framework which projects above the gunwale. . . The machinery is then put in motion; and the car bearing the boat, is drawn by a chain to the top of the inclined plane, at which there is a lock for its reception."
The building of such inclined planes on the Allegheny Portage Railway from Hollidaysburg to Johnstown marks the first conquest of that thousand mile summit ​line of the Alleghenies. For fifty years, in the infancy of engineering, American promoters had been struggling with this problem; it is a far cry—measured by the hosts of futile plans and dreams—from Washington, pushing his horse through the dripping laurels along "McCullough's Path," to Sylvester Welch who spanned Blair's Gap by a railway; then, and not until then, was a passage-way from the Atlantic seaboard to the Mississippi Basin open for freight and passengers on which neither freighter nor coach played any part. The building of the Allegheny Portage Railway, 1830–33, was as epoch-making an event as the opening of the Cumberland Road in 1818 or the opening of the great trans-Allegheny railways at the middle of the century. In many ways it was more significant than the opening of the Erie Canal, which was merely a lengthy application of a principle already perfectly understood. Considering the coach and wagon to have been natural means of communication, we can then say that the Portage Railway was the first artificial means of communication between the East and ​the Mississippi Basin. Well did Mr. Stevenson say that in boldness of design and in difficulty of execution this railway could be compared with no modern work he had seen, unless exception be made for the passes of the Simplon and Mount Cenis in Sardinia; and these, as engineering works, did not impress him as more wonderful.
The project had been proposed early in the history of the canal and in 1826 the experienced Erie Canal engineer Canvass White delivered an opinion that the plan was feasible, but added that a portage wagon road would perhaps answer temporary needs. As the canal building advanced in the valleys on either side of the mountains, the plan of a connecting link which would satisfactorily mount the towering crest which intervened was seriously debated. Late in 1828 Moncure Robinson became engineer in charge and went into the field in 1829 with plans well developed; in November he reported to the board of canal commissioners that the crest could best be overcome by a system of inclined planes, with stationary engines; near the ​summit, a tunnel a mile in length was planned to pierce the crest one hundred and seventy-seven feet beneath its summit and twelve hundred and sixty-four feet above Hollidaysburg, the starting point of the inclines. The total cost for a railway thirty miles in length, of the pattern described, was estimated at slightly less than a million dollars ($936,004.87). On June 8, 1830 a board of engineers consisting of Robinson, Lieutenant-colonel S. H. Long, and Major John Wilson was appointed to survey the route proposed and make final recommendations. Late in that year a report was made which conformed largely with Mr. Robinson's plan matured in 1829, and on March 21, 1831, Governor Wolf approved "An act to continue the improvement of the State by canals and railroads." Section 3 of that act read:
"And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That the said canal commissioners shall commence forthwith and prosecute without delay, a rail road over and across the Allegheny mountains, from the basin at Hollidaysburg, in the county of Huntingdon, to Johnstown, in the county of Cam​bria, a distance of about thirty eight miles, according to the extent, route and plan thereof, stated in their report of the twenty-first day of December, one thousand eight hundred and thirty, excluding the plan of a tunnel as recommended by Moncure Robinson in his report of the twenty-first November, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-nine; and also, that they shall commence and prosecute, without delay, the extension of the Juniata division of the Pennsylvania canal, from the town of Huntingdon, in the county of Huntingdon, to the basin at Hollidaysburg, in the same county, either by canal or slack water navigation; towards the expenditures of which rail-road and canal or slack water navigation, as specified in this section, during the present year, the sum of seven hundred thousand dollars is hereby specifically appropriated, to be paid out of the loan hereinafter mentioned."
The great work was now actually begun. Sylvester Welch, formerly superintendent of the western division of the canal, ​was made principal engineer, and Mr. Robinson consulting engineer; Samuel Jones was superintendent. The final surveys were conducted from Johnstown to the mountain summit beginning in April; they were completed by May 20, 1831, and the work let to the lowest bidders at Ebensburg May 25. The surveys on the eastern slope of the mountain were conducted from Hollidaysburg and were completed in the July following. The contracts were let at Hollidaysburg on July 29.
The termini of the road were at the canal basins at Hollidaysburg and at Johnstown, the former 1,398 feet below the mountain summit, and the latter 1,771 feet below the summit. The road occupied a clean swath through the forests, of one hundred and twenty feet in width, lest fall​ing trees should damage the work. All surveys, estimates and recommendations to the contrary notwithstanding, Mr. Robinson's tunnel was not now built, another plane being added to the total which enabled the railway to vault the summit. The planes were ten in number; beginning at Johnstown they were as follows:
The First American Tunnel
[By this tunnel the Allegheny Portage Railway crossed the summit of the mountains]
​remainder on that division were about a mile in length, each rising about twenty feet. The shortest level on the eastern slope was .15 of a mile and the longest 3.72 miles, descending 146.71 feet. The steepest incline rose only 10¼ feet in a hundred—a grade not much steeper than that on many pioneer roads. Mr. Welch affirmed that cars could be drawn up these by horses or by stationary steam or horsepower engines. On the eastern planes he suggested that advantage be taken of the force of gravity; on three of the levels, those at each terminus, and the thirteen mile level between Planes 1 and 2, he urged the use of locomotives; elsewhere he advised the use of horse power. The road (single track) was completed by the beginning of 1834 and traffic began March 18, 1834. The ten planes were supplied with ten stationary engines. Half a century ago, Washington, in that classic appeal to Harrison, of 1784, maintained that a great plan of communication between the East and West was practicable, in that "The western inhabitants would do their part towards its execution. Weak as they are," ​he said, "they would meet us half way." What a splendid comment it is on Washington's wisdom and foresight to record that these engines on the Allegheny Portage Railway, which hauled the first load of freight over the Alleghenies which ever crossed them by artificial means were made in the young West—in Pittsburg! Washington, at least, did not misjudge in the least the spirit of those Virginians and Pennsylvanians who in his day were pushing ahead over Indian trails into the lands beyond the mountains.
The second track of the railway was put under contract at Hollidaysburg May 31, 1834. In the same year three locomotives for the levels were ordered, one from Boston, and two from Newcastle, Delaware. One of these was sent on to Pittsburg by canal to serve as model of others to be built there. "The road as completed," writes Mr. Wilson, "showed a width of track between rails of 4 feet and 9 inches, and a distance between tracks, including width of inner rail of each track, of 5 feet. The railway between the planes was laid to correspond vertically with the grade ​adopted for the road, and was in all cases laid to form horizontal arcs of circles, or their tangents. Flat iron bars on wooden rails were placed on the inclined planes. On the balance of the road, edge rails 18 feet in length, weighing 39½ pounds to the yard were laid, resting in iron chairs on wooden sills. The latter were fastened to cross ties where the road passed over high embankments, but, on solid ground they were attached to stone blocks measuring about 3½ cubic feet. To do this two holes were drilled into each block. Into these holes oak plugs were driven. The cast-iron chair was placed directly upon the top of the stone block, and spikes driven through holes in the flanges of the chair into the oak plugs. The rail was a double headed rail, and held in place by a wedge. The difficulty of the spreading of the tracks was at first overcome by substituting for each alternate pair of blocks a stone block some 7 feet long, extending across the track, and having a chair at each end. This was found to be too expensive, and wooden cross ties were placed between each pair of stone blocks."
​The road as opened was, like the original Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road, merely a new sort of road-way, on which horses drew cars on rails (instead of on a flat road-bed) between the inclines. A rush of business at once overwhelmed the road. Between the middle of March and the middle of April, 1834, the number of cars tripled in number and were then entirely inadequate to the trade. Much "portaging" was done in the old way on the old-time portage path by wagon. The business was done by transportation firms or by individuals, the commonwealth furnishing the road-bed, and a motive power only on the inclined planes.
It was in October, 1834, that the keelboat "Hit or Miss" from the Lackawanna, Jesse Crisman owner and Major C. Williams commander, first of all craft to leap the Alleghenies, was taken from Susquehanna waters at Hollidaysburg and laid safely in Allegheny waters at Johnstown. Crisman expected to sell his boat at Hollidaysburg—as his ancestors had ever done; but John Dougherty of the Reliance Transportation Line, constructed a car calculated ​to bear "the novel burden." Starting at noon, "they rested at night on the top of the mountain, like Noah's Ark on Ararat, and descended the next morning into the Valley of the Mississippi, and sailed for St. Louis." It was fifty years, to the month, since the pioneer promoter of trans-Allegheny communications, Washington, was searching in Dunkard Bottom for a pathway for keel-boats across this great divide. History was again repeated; as in the old days when, in 1758, Forbes's Road through Pennsylvania eclipsed Virginia's highway which Washington championed, Braddock's Road, because it was a more direct route from the heart of colonial life to the Ohio Basin, so now Pennsylvania's waterways, joined by a portage railway of only thirty-eight miles in length, eclipsed any and all other possible water routes to the Ohio Valley by being actually opened to commerce. These repetitions of history illustrate Pennsylvania's keystone position in the United States, so far as the seaboard and the commercial centers ​of the Mississippi Basin are concerned.
Though exceptionally interesting and suggestive, the Allegheny Portage Railway was only a link in a chain. The two great canals, in the valleys of the Juniata and Conemaugh were the greater links; a horse-car rail road was laid from Philadelphia to Columbia on the Susquehanna and this, soon supplied with locomotives, became the eastern link in the chain of communication of which the Pennsylvania Canal was the important part. By 1835 the complete system was in operation between Philadelphia and Pittsburg; a table of distances will be interesting:
THE PENNSYLVANIA ROUTE IN 1835
The lockage in the central division between Columbia and Hollidaysburg was 747¾ feet; it was forty feet wide at the top, twenty-eight feet at the bottom, and was four feet deep. The dams numbered eighteen; there were thirty-three aqueducts and one hundred and one locks, including guards; those between Columbia and Duncan's Island were 90 x 17 feet; the remainder 90 x 15 feet. About sixteen miles on the Juniata was slackwater navigation in 1834. The western division was the same in width and depth as the central; the lockage from Johnstown to Pittsburg was 471 feet. On this division there were sixty-four locks, 90 x 15 feet, ten dams, two tunnels, sixteen aqueducts, sixty-four culverts, thirty-nine water weirs and one hundred and fifty-two bridges; 21¼ miles was slackwater navigation. The cost of the central division was $5,307,253.26; the Juniata Valley portion costing $3,570,016.29. The western division cost $3,096,522.30; making the ​entire original cost of the canal proper $8,403,775.56. The total original cost of the Allegheny Portage Railway to January, 1837, including laying the second track and building the Conemaugh viaduct was $1,634,357.69¾, making the total cost of the "Pennsylvania Canal" $10,038,133.25¾—half a million dollars more than the Erie Canal, which it also exceeded in length by thirty-one miles. Yet the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, of only one hundred and eighty-five miles in length, cost a million dollars more than the Pennsylvania Canal.
The later history of the Pennsylvania Canal well illustrates the restlessness of human hearts, and the mighty conquests over nature which restless ambition has made possible. One success, such as the Portage Railway, only suggested a greater one, a railway over the mountain. The road was only in fairly good working order when, in 1836, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a resolution ordering the canal commissioners to have a survey made of the Alleghenies to determine whether the inclined planes could not be dispensed with! Within the next decade a New ​Portage Railway was planned which would follow, in part, the route of the old line. The hundreds who were connected with the manipulation of the expensive and cumbersome planes decried, of course, the new road, as we have noted so often in this series; the owners and operators of earlier methods of transportation scoffed at and opposed the new. But the new rail road was not built at once. The opposition carried weight. In April, 1846, however, the Pennsylvania Railway was incorporated to build a through thoroughfare from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. Of all routes the Juniata-Conemaugh passage-way offered an unrivaled course and was quickly chosen. The long contest over right of way in the Potomac Valley could not be reproduced here, as the canal was a state affair. In 1847, contracts had been let for sections eastward from Pittsburg and westward from Harrisburg. In two years the sixty miles between Harrisburg and Lewistown were opened; in the year following the portion from Lewistown to Hollidaysburg was completed. The western division was pushed up the Conemaugh with equal ​rapidity and on December 10, 1852, communication between the termini was possible, passengers and freight being transferred across the mountain crest by stage and wagon. In 1854 the railway was completed across the Alleghenies.
In 1850 the legislature took steps to improve the communication between the two ends of the canal by building the proposed portage road and avoiding planes. The work went on simultaneously with the building of the Pennsylvania track; as a temporary accommodation the railway company allowed the portage operators to avoid Plane No. 1, by using the railway track for a distance of four miles east from Conemaugh station, east of Johnstown. Planes No. 2 and No. 3 were avoided by means of a new double track to the foot of Plane No. 4. In 1854 the Pennsylvania Railway was completed across the mountain, and the trade of that company was of course lost to the Portage Railway. On July 1, 1855, the new portage route was in operation, though incomplete.
The great success of the Pennsylvania Railway and its importance to the commer​cial interests of the commonwealth tended to sink the old canal and its portage railway out of sight. In 1855 this "main line of the public works" was offered for sale, but the offer was not liberal. Another act was passed May 16, 1857, for its sale and June 25, it was purchased by the Pennsylvania Railway Company; possession was taken in August.
After attempting to operate successfully the Portage Railway, the new owners lost $7,220.14 in three months and ordered the line closed. The canal was operated by the Pennsylvania Canal Company in the interest of the railway and that was gradually abandoned. The division from Pittsburg to Johnstown was entirely abandoned by 1864; the portion in the Juniata Valley was abandoned in 1899, and that along the Susquehanna in 1900.
* ↑ Historic Highways of America, vols. v, xi, xii.
* ↑ An Historical Account . . of Canal Navigation in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1795), p. 3.
* ↑ Id., pp. 7–8.
* ↑ One of the most enlightening broadsides of the time treating of the delay of the internal improvement plan is Turner Camac's Facts and Arguments respecting the great Utility of an extensive plan of Inland Navigation in America (Philadelphia, 1805).
* ↑ The canal was proposed to begin on the Schuylkill and lead to the Susquehanna, but it actually began on the Susquehanna, the country between that point and Philadelphia being covered by the old Union Canal and the Columbia Railway which was soon built.
* ↑ Facts and Arguments, pp. 57–58.
* ↑ For this and many additional items of information concerning the greater problem of Pennsylvania's entire system of canals, see Theodore B. Klein's monograph "The Canals of Pennsylvania and the System of Internal Improvements," Report Pennsylvania Secretary of Internal Improvements, 1900.
* ↑ Sketch of the Civil Engineering of North America, pp. 128–129.
* ↑ Laws of Pennsylvania, 1830–31, no. 104 (p. 195).
* ↑ These, as well as many preceding and succeeding data, are from William Bender Wilson's admirable monograph, "The Evolution, Decadence, and Abandonment of the Allegheny Portage Railroad" in the Annual Report of the Secretary of Internal Affairs of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1898–99, part iv, pp. xli–xcvi. This monograph forms an important chapter in Mr. Wilson's History of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.
* ↑ Sherman Day's Historical Collections of the State of Pennsylvania, p. 184.
* ↑ H. S Tanner's A Brief Description of the Canals and Rail Roads of the United States (November, 1834), pp. 25–26.
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