1. Moving Westward
By 1820, so many people had moved West that the population of the original 13 states had declined!

2. Traveling West Settlers took a number of routes West …
Great Wagon Road
Across Pennsylvania
Dates back to colonial days
Wilderness Road
Opened by Daniel Boone before the Revolution
Led through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky

3. Cumberland gap

4. Cumberland gap
Beautiful landscape like this still exists across the Cumberland Gap and throughout the Appalachian Mountains. Within this scenery, some of the poorest people in our country struggle with day to day living.

5. Traveling West Ohio River Trails
Loaded animals and wagons onto flatboats and floated down the shallow Ohio River into Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois
Trails
Took people into the South where the plantation system flourished in the rich soil

6. Flat boats on the river

7. New States Between 1792 – 1818, eight new states joined the union:
Louisiana
Kentucky
Tennessee
Ohio
Indiana
Mississippi
Illinois
Alabama

8. Transportation Systems

9. Improvements to Roads Turnpikes and Corduroy Roads
Private companies built gravel and stone roads that were better than the muddle, narrow roads most used
To pay for these roads, they collected tolls from travelers
Compare this to the “turnpike” or “tollway” systems we have today. Do you mind paying extra $$ to drive on these better roads? How would you have felt in the early 1800s?

10. Lancaster Turnpike Best road in the United States
Linked Philadelphia and Lancaster
Built on a bed of gravel so that water drained off quickly
Topped off with flat stones

11. The Lancaster Turnpike 1795

12. Building the turnpike
Workers laid out the gravel over the graded down dirt and then topped it off with flat stones that were made flat by those hired to hammer them down.

13. Corduroy Roads Roads made of logs in swampy areas Noisy and Bumpy
Kept wagons from sinking in the mud

14. Corduroy road

15. Corduroy road

16. National Road
In 1806, Congress approved funds for a national road building project
Slated to run from Cumberland, Maryland to Wheeling, Virginia
The project was later extended to Illinois

17. Map of the national road
Look at all of the cities that sprang up along the National Road – settlement patterns across this area would be very different had the road not been built

18. Steam Transport
Traveling “up river” was very difficult – a boat could travel downstream from Pittsburgh to New Orleans in six weeks but the return trip took seventeen weeks!

19. Fitch and Fulton
1787 – John Fitch presents the steam engine to Congress
He opened a ferry service on the Delaware River that failed
Robert Fulton launched the Clermont on the Hudson River and set a record for the voyage from NYC to Albany

20. The Age of Steamboats
Gave farmers and merchants a cheap means of moving goods
Flat Bottom Steamboats – Henry Shreve designed this for the shallow rivers in the West

21. Dangers of Steamboats Sparks from smokestacks could cause fire
Boilers exploded
Between 1811 – 1851
44 collided
166 burned
200 exploded

22. Steamboats on the cumberland

23. steamboats

24. Steamboats on the mississippi

25. The Canal Boom
Western Farmers needed a way to get their goods directly to market
To meet this need, Americans dug canals

26. Erie Canal Linked the Great Lakes with the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers
Let farmers ship their goods to the port of New York
Brought business to towns along the route
Took thousands of workers
Became an instant success creating a vital link between the east and west

27. Erie Canal

28. Erie Canal

29. Erie Canal today

30. Erie Canal today