Americans Move Westward

Traveling West By 1820, so many people had moved west that the population in some of the original 13 states had actually declined. Before long, some western territories had populations large enough to apply for statehood. Between 1792 and 1819, eight states joined the Union: Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, and Alabama.

Improved Travel As more and more people moved west, new and better roads were built to accommodate them. An even greater innovation was the invention of the steam engine. This made traveling up and down river the best and cheapest way to travel. Before the steam engine, you basically had to pull your boat back up river with ropes. Steamboats did have their drawbacks, though. They were prone to fire and explosion.

The Canal Boom Farmers in the west still needed a way to get their goods directly to the east. A somewhat far-fetched solution was proposed. We could, in theory, dig a 350 mile canal linking the Great Lakes with the Mohawk and Hudson rivers. The Erie Canal as it came to be called would let western farmers ship their goods to the port of New York. People thought that it could not be done, but in only 8 years, the Erie Canal was opened. The cost of shipping goods dropped to about 1/10 of what it was before the canal was built.