Red Lodge daily news combined with Carbon County news., 1933-08-23

birchbark canoe and on dragging travoix lead
the way. Close behind them presses the on
coming white MANN creaking. numbering two
wheeled carts, In Concord stage coaches. in
chaises, In Conestoga wagons, In steamboats, and
canalboats, In fast packet boats and swift Yam
kee clipper ships. Now the covered wagons are
rolling out to Oregon and the pony express
rider dashes up and as quickly speeds away.
The pages of history turn rapidly and the
horse-drawn wagons and carriages are succeeded
bv a new marvel, the 'horseless carriage" or
automobile. And almost before man has mas
tered this new form of quick travel across the
land, the Wrights leap up from the sand dunes
OF Kitty Hawk. In North Carolina. and the dream
of Icarus Is a reality. Man Is now travelling
through the air.
In the midst of all this splendid pageantry of
the conquest of water, land and air there Is one
chapter which stirs your imagination as perhaps
no other one does. That is the Parade of the
Iron Horse" You view approximately the his
torically authentic costumes Of more than a
hundred actors In the pageant. You are amused
and delighted by the pantomimeo of some OF these
actors as they reproduce the thoughts and feel
ings and actions of past generations of Amer
leans. And at times you are deeply stirred as
you say to yourself, Il am seeing history In the
making"
But when those locomotives, from Peter Coo
per's little TON Thumb on down to one of the
modern Titans, come rolling across the stage
with ringing bells, putting smokestacks and
screaming whistles, then-ah, then! it's hard
for you to stife that little-boy urge to stand up
and yell For In these black monsters you see
the inventive genius of America you see the
symbol of the final conquest of the wilderness;
YOU see the instrument which first bound to-
gether the broad expanse of these United States
of America; you see a whole century of the
development of the machine age.
The first iron horse paradoxically enough,
was more horse than iron. The first railroad
built In America for carrying passengers and
freight was the Baltimore & Ohio. Chartered In
1897, 1t began laying the rails for its ID miles
of road from Baltimore to Ellicotts Mills on
July A, 1923, with Charles Carroll of Carroll
ton, the only living signer of the Declaration
of Independence. lifting the first ~shovelful oil
dirt. incidentally, this historic scene is graphic
ally reproduced In the Baltimore q Ohio's ex
hibit In the Travel and Transport buildIng.)
The road was opened in May, 1880. In tbs
meantime the promoters had been experiment
ing with various sorts of cars One was a horse
drawn passenger car. (Such as Is shown In Illus
tration No. / above) Another was a fiat ca
fitted with a treadmil operated by a horse Blu
upon its trial trip 1t came to grief-a COW OF
the track upset I'll Another experiment, whicl
was also unsuccessful, was mace Win n SAL
boat on wheels, called the Meteor"
Then the inventive genius of Peter Coope
came into the picture. He built a tiny loc0motiv
with a boiler about the size of the one whic
stands behind your kitchen stove and with fue
made OF gun barrels. To this he gave the al
uropriate name Of "Tom Thumb and made som
trial runs on the partly-hnished railroad In 1885,
From this experience he reconstructed his Il
comotive and on August 28, 1880, the "ToI
Thumb" pushed, instead of pulled, a car wit
"a messengers over the entire IS miles of tn
road. attaining q speed of four miles an hou
A few days later occurred the famous rae
between the 'Tom Thumb" and a horse-draw
car over the double track between Baltimore
Ellicotts Mills. At the start the gray hors
Ieaped into the lead and held 1t for awhile. The
the putting "Tom Thumb" began to catch up
1t drew abreast the straining animal-tht
passed It. But Just as shouts Of triumph wei
up from Cooper's passengers a belt slipped {
the mechanism of "Tom Thumb"i SO the grs
horse won the race to Baltimore.
But despite this victory the officials of d
new railroad had enough confidence In the (
ture of steam locomotives to offer a prize
$4,000 for the best engine which should De d
nvered to the road for trial before June /, 18s
This prize was won by Phineas Davis of Yor
Pa, a matchmaker He called his locomotI
the York" but the pioneer railroad men to-