Canals, Railroads, Philadelphia, and the Struggle for Internal Improvement in the Cumberland Valley, 1825-1837

In April 1825, the Pennsylvania General Assembly authorized the construction of the "Public Works," a state-built system of canals and railroads designed to provide improved transportation throughout the Commonwealth.  The most vital portion of the Public Works was the "Main Line," a 395-mile long series of canals and railroads built to link the state's largest city, Philadelphia, with the important western city of Pittsburgh.

The 1825 act also authorized a survey for a canal through the Cumberland Valley connecting the Susquehanna River with the Potomac River. The survey was completed and submitted to the commissioners on 6 December 1827. The state did not, however, act on the survey; the proposed canal was never constructed.

Instead, a second survey was ordered "from a point at or near the west end of the Harrisburg Bridge, through or near to Carlisle to Chambersburg, for the purpose of constructing a rail-road." The completed survey was submitted by the Canal Commissioners to the legislature in November, 1828. However, the Commonwealth once again failed to take action.

In late 1828, a group of citizens from Baltimore, Maryland, petitioned the Pennsylvania legislature asking for the right to build a railroad from Baltimore to Carlisle via the City of York. Despite the pleas of the residents of Cumberland and York Counties, Philadelphia's representatives in the General Assembly refused to permit the construction of the proposed line.

This left the people of the Cumberland Valley dependant on an inadequate system of roads and turnpikes, retarding the economic growth of the region. Only with the opening of the Cumberland Valley Railroad in 1837 did the Cumberland Valley finally have a means of transportation sufficient to spur economic growth.

The purpose of this article is not to discuss the operation of the Cumberland Valley Railroad; that has already been done by others, particularly by Paul J. Westhaeffer in his excellent The History of the Cumberland Valley Railroad (1979). Instead this article will concentrate on the transportation needs of the Cumberland Valley in the 1820's and 1830's and the struggle between the people of the valley and the business interests of the City of Philadelphia in meeting those needs.

BACKGROUND

The Cumberland Valley, 12 to 20 miles in width of relatively flat land lying between Blue Mountain (also called North Mountain) and South Mountain, stretches approximately 75 miles from the west shore of the Susquehanna River opposite Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, southwest to the Potomac River at Williamsport, Maryland. It is part of the "Great Valley" that "extends under different names from the southern extremity of Vermont across the Hudson at Newburgh, the Delaware at Easton, the Susquehanna at Harrisburg, the Potomac at Harper's Ferry and the James at Lynchburg, and then sweeps around through Tennessee, and loses itself in Alabama and the Southwest." The Pennsylvania counties of Cumberland and Franklin and Maryland's Washington County lie within the Cumberland Valley.

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