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Highway Chronicle Chapter VI:
Demands
for Better Travel Lead to Road Alternatives
Columbus
was becoming a major commercial and government center noted for its financial
and legal institutions, the state penitentiary, restaurants, hotels, shops,
buggy and carriage works, breweries, foundries, textiles, rock quarries,
agriculture, and livestock.
The
rising prosperity created new challenges to the highway system that would
ultimately lead to a public outcry for different and more efficient modes of
transportation.
A
viable alternative was the Ohio & Erie
Canal, located between Cleveland and
Portsmouth, completed in 1832 at a cost of $4.2 million. The 308-mile long
waterway passed through Canal Winchester and Lockbourne, and was linked to
Columbus by an 11-mile long feeder canal. The local channel system, fed by
the Scioto River and Big and Little Walnut Creeks, was a major freight and
passenger route that provided mud-free travel until its closure in 1904.
The
slow, horse drawn canal boats were overshadowed by the “iron horse”
railroads that began operation in Ohio in the 1850s. Notable railroads, such as
the Baltimore & Ohio, and the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati &
Indianapolis, would monopolize long distance freight and passenger travel
throughout the nation for nearly a century, establishing Columbus as a key
station, roundhouse, and freight yard location.
Next Chapter:
New
Pavement Techniques are Celebrated
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