Railroad Routes in the Alleghenies, Part I

The importance of railroads in ushering in the industrial age and ‘uniting’ the United States is well known. The relatively weak political and geographical position of Maryland and Baltimore in the early 1800s makes an interesting study of adversity creating imaginative solutions. For Baltimore, the problems to be solved was a chain of mountain ridges that sat squarely across any path to the west and two neighboring states that lacked good sense in an inverse relationship to their superior size and wealth. Maryland was granted to the Catholic Calverts in the 1600s. The colony was small and had a definite western boundary (headspring of the Potomac) as opposed to neighbors whose western boundary,pompously claimed as the Pacific, for sure extended to the navigable ‘western waters’ (Sidebar: actually, Pennsylvania colony had a nebulous western boundary of 5 degrees west of the Delaware River. The Allegheny region was claimed and defended by Virginia through the semi-private Ohio Company of Virginia. George Washington's ownership in this company makes his advocacy of the Braddock Road approach to the Forks of the Ohio and a transmontane canal more understandable.) To the North and South Maryland was geographically squeezed by the more powerful Pennsylvanians and Virginians. The Potomac was the agreed upon boundary with Virginia, but the Virginians did the surveying, a fact that was important when the river split into two main branches at Oldtown. One branch had to be chosen as the main stem. Although Washington did later surveying for Lord Fairfax, Thomas Jefferson’s father was involved in the infamous mapping of the Potomac that made the North Branch the main stem rather than the South Branch. Referring to a map, this choice doesn’t seem possible. The South Branch drained a much larger land area. Maryland, even now indescribably shaped, would have been have been two large triangles balanced by a whisker thin middle at Hancock. The mile wide Hancock situation might be blamed on the work of Messrs. Mason and Dixon. It would seem that the way the Mason Dixon line’s latitude was set was a crew went into the field to find the northernmost loop of the Potomac and then a mile or so was added to this latitude to give Maryland barely enough room to run a road through. Actually, William Penn was responsible for the the nearly bisecting boundary for a reason that seems almost too incredible to believe. Suffice it to say that the eventual boundary between MD and PA would have a profound effect on the B&O route.

As to the mountain chain that was in the way, a trip further back into history is required. In an period between 360 and 250 million year ago, a land mass from the southeast (what is now Africa) was grinding into the eastern coast of a land that is now North America. In the process a set of mountains as high as any on earth today was thrust up along the contact point, today the remaining roots are the Blue Ridge Mountains. Further to the west, lower and more gently folded mountains were created that are today’s Alleghenies. Because of the varying amount of eroding power that wind, frost and especially water brought to bear against these mountains, the Alleghenies are the highest mountains remaining in this section of the Appalachian chain. To understand the relationship between mountain building and erosion, one has to ponder the differences in time scales. Mountains resulting from plate tectonics are thrust up over millions of years in ‘events’. The wind has blown and rain has fallen since water and air were formed and began to be moved by solar energy. The resulting erosion takes place on a daily basis. And in geologic time, powerful 100-year floods occur at eye blink speed. While mountains were being thrust up in unconceivable slow millions of year’s events, the actions of flowing water had plenty of time to patiently maintain streambeds already in place. So it is that the Potomac continued its twisted path from sea level to an intersection with Wills Creek at a place later named Cumberland and on to its highest headsprings, in the process cutting through the highest of mountains.

Further west, other rivers start heading in opposite direction in a much longer pursuit of sea level at the mouth of the Mississippi. It might be concluded that the Alleghenies are a mere function of the speed that rivers descend to sea level on each side of this continental divide, that is the shorter rivers flowing east had more eroding power than the longer west flowing rivers that drain most of the Allegheny Plateau. While this difference was a major contributor to the resulting land forms, it is a coincidence that the Allegheny Mountains start almost on the Eastern Continental Divide and is not why the Alleghenies are geologically different. The initial Allegheny Front ridge(variously named Dan’s and Piney) is entirely in the Potomac River drainage, yet it is substantially higher than the lower and more sharply folded ridges immediately to the east. Often called the Allegheny Plateau, the Alleghenies in this region is not truly a flat tableland that was elevated and subsequently eroded by rivers. The major ridges are the harder rock remainders of synclines and anticlines that evidence broad higher mountains in the past. The region has a plateau appearance because of a phenomenon known as concurrent or accordant ridgelines. Apparently the action of freeze-thaw and wind erosion combine to reduce mountain tops down in a fairly even fashion, while rivers are embossing their stream beds into the upthrusting mountains. The size and height of one of the original mountains can be visualized (and probably mathematically calculated) by measuring the angle of the Pottsville sandstone formation as it angles upward at the crest of Savage Mountain and as it angles back down at Meadow Mountain, ten miles or so to the west. As to relative directions, the mountain ridges trend from the southwest to the northeast. The Monongahela system rivers west of the eastern continental divide actually flow in a northwestern direction until Pittsburgh, well to the west of the major ridges. This difference in directions resulted in the rivers cutting through the Allegheny ridges, the result making rail routes feasible.

The mountain terrain west of Cumberland was the subject of much study in the late colonial and early U.S. history. That some of this exploration was done by George Washington was a result of his background as a surveyor for Lord Fairfax and his interest and ownership in land west of Fort Cumberland, as mentioned above. The earliest route to the west was possibly the direction taken by Christopher Gist in his work for Virginia Company. He first headed north and then used the Raystown Branch for a mountain-crossing route for his packhorses. Later, when Washington had Gist and a Delaware Indian (maybe Nemacolin), blaze a trail to the forks of the Ohio, Nemacolin chose a route in the same direction later followed by the National Road (today, US Alt. 40). This is the trail that General Braddock used for his massive movement of troops and material on his disastrous march to the forks in 1755. (Sidebar for canoe enthusiasts; the French countered Braddock’s gigantic overland campaign by transporting their ultimately victorious forces and paraphernalia from Montreal to Fort Duquesne by canoes, using the later appropriately named French Creek as a bridge route between Lake Erie and the Allegheny River). Nemacolin was apparently way ahead of his time as a transportation engineer and his choice of a path up Savage Mountain is not too different than today’s Interstate 68 route up the same ridge. When the federal government got into the act of road building, their National Road went up Savage in a much steeper and shorter route. This points out a difference in various forms of transportation. Highway transportation accommodated first man on foot, then various horse motivation and finally autos and one-at-a-time truck traffic. The thought was to go the shortest route, which often meant avoiding the twisting and rock strewn river valleys. A single load of freight was hauled up mountains by horses and later trucks without concern for ease or speed. For anyone with memory preceding the Interstates, a trip on US 40 or 50 across the Alleghenies meant always getting behind a long train of traffic being led by a semi trailer going 10 miles an hour up and down a seemingly never ended series of mountains.

George Washington also had a great interest in his Potomac River as a transportation artery and finding a similar water route over the mountains. After giving up on making the Potomac navigable, he was involved in forming the Potomack Canal company, which laid some of the legal claims for the later C&O Canal. Canal engineers have to keep their route flat; a canal is a series of connected long pools of water. Washington and his canal successors were therefore interested in the rivers that flowed in the mountains (for possible routes and for sources of water). Washington and the rest were uneasy about the ability to use the upper Youghiogheny and the Cheat River because of the extreme conditions in their canyons. But the answer for a feasible route seemed to exist in another route. And that where the rest of the story begins.

The B&O railroad was founded by the city of Baltimore and a group of merchants desperate not to become irrelevant. Baltimore was near the top of the Chesapeake, which meant that ships had an unproductive and often tedious detour in and out. Baltimore was not served by a river to the hinterland. The Patapsco provided energy for some mills but not transportation. The Susquehanna formed the bay, but a series of rapids near the mouth added to shallow water upstream limited its use for traffic. After several years of debate on whether to build a canal to the Susquehanna or to the Potomac, Baltimore began thinking ‘out of the box’. Canals had several critical limitations; they froze up, dried up or flooded with regularity. And, the highest canal in existence at the time reached around 600 feet in elevation. The C&O canal proponents (and engineers) blithely were planning to cross the 3,000 foot high Alleghenies. Baltimore engineers concluded that the relatively minor ridges between their city and the Potomac would make a canal uneconomical. The Philadelphia interests were likewise concocting an implausible canal scheme to compete with New York and its Erie Canal. One of the problems when companies have more capital than shareholder accountability or, in this case, when the government gets involved, is that ill conceived projects go forward. The Pennsylvanian’s Main Line of Internal Improvements proved to be a relatively short lived anachronism. In Maryland, the C&O Canal however would create serious legal obstacles and delays to Baltimore’s idea of the rail road. As Charles Roberts (his thoughts are paraphrased throughout this section) points out, Baltimore was not brilliantly developing new technology; they were improving on the highway. Their highway would use rails (already used in England and a couple places in the U.S. for short mine hauls) to allow heavy tonnage and to keep off non-paying 'pikers'. The most important improvement, however, was the idea of equated distances. This engineering concept basically stated that much longer distances should be traveled to eliminate steep grades. This would mean that rail road routes would follow the grades created by rivers in crossing mountainous area, the same intent of the C&O Canal. The soundness of the engineering of the B&O routes is borne out by CSXT mile-long trains still using the routes chosen 150 years ago. The engineers knew the trouble spots. The first was the route from Baltimore to the Potomac, the second, and much more significant, was the ridges west of Cumberland. Immediately, teams of engineers were dispatched to the then wilderness of the Alleghenies. This mountain obstacle was truly significant. An often made comment by topographically challenged people (who make the discovery that whole states in the west are higher in elevation than the Alleghenies) is that 3000 foot mountains are insignificant. The much-used example of Denver, although a ‘mile high’, reaches its elevation in a 850 mile long uphill slope that starts at the Mississippi. The 184 miles of Potomac from tidewater to Cumberland had only reached an elevation of 600 feet. Cumberland is almost in the shadow of the Allegheny Front, which at Dan’s Rock is 2954 feet high. B&O engineers looking for a route to Wheeling (not Pittsburgh) would naturally look to the northwest of Cumberland. This direction was superior also because the Alleghenies generally trend lower in elevation to the North. One would assume that the engineers would be looking for the closest location that the Eastern Continental Divide came to Cumberland because at that point westward flowing streams could be found for a grade through the mountains. This point was immediately over Savage Mountain at a spot later to be called Finzel, marked on early route maps with the location of Cranberry Swamp, approximately 10 miles in a straight line from Cumberland. (One point on the Eastern Continental Divide is marked on I-68, however the divide is again recrossed further east near Finzel.) Cranberry Swamp is the source of Savage River, a tributary of the Potomac. The high glade can be reached through a low spot in the Savage Mountain ridge called Wolf Gap. Besides Savage River, two other westward flowing streams emanate from this location; Piney Run watershed leads to the Casselman River at Salisbury, in the process cutting through Meadow Mountain. (Piney Run is impounded and water destined for the Mississippi is pumped over the divide to Frostburg to end up in the Potomac.) A longer and therefore lower grade is made by a small stream that also starts near Finzel. This steam, Flaugherty Creek, is definitely unremarkable except for the important role it served for railroad routes.

B&O would not assume that any route, no matter how apparently superior, could be used and in the late 1820s and early 1830s they surveyed every possibility (almost). Teams led by engineers were sent into the wilds, each engineer was to survey a different route. Charles Roberts includes in his book Sand Patch a map produced for the report after the early surveys were completed. The B&O 1833 survey report map is interesting in a study of area between Cumberland and Wheeling in the early 1800s. Of course, Cumberland, Wheeling and Pittsburgh show as emerging cities. Even Somerset County towns of Berlin and Somerset seem well developed and served by a network of roads. What was half a century later to become Garrett County was apparently almost undeveloped in the 1820s. The National Highway crosses the northern end of county, but Grantsville does not warrant mention on the map. In fact, the only place names indicated are Selbysport and John McHenry’s. Perhaps the map was biased towards Pennsylvania, but Garrett County certainly appears as a remote and wild place at the time.

Another reason for doing alternate survey routes was because of the political boundaries of Maryland. Recall that Maryland does not touch the Ohio and to get to Wheeling (Virginia at that time) Pennsylvania almost surely had to be used. In 1852, Wheeling was finally reached. The best route was not used and much of the route that was used did not appear on the 1833 map. What had happened in the mean time?

© Dave Cathell

Continue to Part II

Part I	Part II	Map 1835
Cumberland West	No West End?	Pathfinders
PA Routes	Reserved	Reserved

Continued

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