English Wikipedia - The Free Encycl...
Download this dictionary
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
The
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
is one of the
oldest railroads in the United States
and the first
common carrier
railroad. It came into being mostly because the city of Baltimore wanted to compete with the newly constructed
Erie Canal
(which served
New York City
) and
another canal
being proposed by
Pennsylvania
, which would have connected
Philadelphia
and
Pittsburgh
. At first this railroad was located entirely in the state of
Maryland
with an original line from the port of Baltimore west to
Sandy Hook
. At this point to continue westward, it had to cross into
Virginia
(now
West Virginia
) over the
Potomac River
, adjacent to the confluence of the Potomac and
Shenandoah
rivers. From there it passed through Virginia from
Harpers Ferry
to a point just west of the junction of
Patterson Creek
and the North Branch Potomac River where it crossed back into Maryland to reach
Cumberland
. From there it was extended to the
Ohio River
at
Wheeling
and a few years later also to
Parkersburg, West Virginia
.
See more at Wikipedia.org...
© This article uses material from
Wikipedia
®
and is licensed under the
GNU Free Documentation License
and under the
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License