Steam boats frequented the Mississippi and
Ohio Rivers. New Orleans and Louisville were
two of the major ports.
Mosaic of Fulton's steamboat.
Fulton Street subway station, NYC.
Named after Robert Fulton.
Steamtrains carried the larger
chunk of cargo and passanger loads
up until the end of 1940s.
Horse carriages composed the main traffic
in paved city streets until the early 1900s.
In the early 1900s they competed with
the automobile for the road-space.
There were many deadly accidents!
The main transportation modes prior to 1900s were boats, trains, and horse carriages.
Boats were operated along shores, in rivers, lakes, and canals. Until the introduction of steamboat by Robert Fulton in 1807, the canal networks were limited and the water transportation in canals was mainly local. Following the introduction of steamboat to the water ways, the canal networks expanded to more than 4,000 miles. Mississippi River was one of the major water transportation routes. New Orleans became the fourth largest port, after London, Liverpool, and New York ports (Dilger 5).
The funding for construction and operation of canals was not national, however. The national government believed that these transportation endeavors were under state and local jurisdiction and that it would be unconstitutional to intervene. The same approach was applied towards projects involving roads and railroads. Instead of directly funding these projects, national government indirectly invested in them by mainly granting nationally owned land to state and local authorities for building canal, road, and railroad infrastructures. With facilitating postal services, however, the national government could get more directly involved because the constitution laid this responsibility on the national government.
The steam engines also introduced trains to the transportation schemes. By 1830, there were several large commercial railroad companies operating in designated routes but the long distance transportation by trains was intervallic because each company used different railroad measurements. This started to change by 1938, when the national government designated all railroads as postal routes. 3,000 miles of tracks extended to 9,000 miles by 1850. By 1860, this network reached 30,000 miles with standard sizes (Mertins 6, 7). "By 1980, there were 163,597 miles of rail track in the United States, including several transcontinental lines connecting California, Oregon, and Washington to the rest of the nation” (Dilger 9).
Transport by railroads was more, reliable, faster, and larger than the transport by over-land roads. Companies operating on over-land roads could not compete with railroad companies and they disappeared, not re-emerging until the invasion of motor vehicles.
By the end of the 1800s, there were about 2 million miles of road across the country. A majority of them, however, were dirt roads and their usability greatly depended on weather conditions.
Cities had better streets and roads because they had larger tax bases to collect funds for road construction and maintenance.
As mentioned above, for the most part, state and local money funded road building, although the national government supported them granting nationally owned land, which generated some money by being auctioned off to transportation companies.
“Many Southern states did not set aside any tax revenue for road construction. They relied on Statute labor (convicts) to build and maintain roads” (Dilger 10).
Towards the end of 1800s, canal-ways began to diminish as the country expanded west-ward and increasingly relied on railroads. Waterways in the West were scarce and railroads proved to be efficient.
There were some issues with railroads, too, however. The railroad industry was fractured among more than 1000 companies operating in different regions or states. They were not well regulated or audited. Consequently there were many cases of arbitrary prices fixing and bribery. Larger suppliers, for example, paid off these company representatives under the table to receive lower rates, which made the market inhospitable for smaller suppliers (those who relied on railroads for the transport of their goods). Eventually many of these smaller companies were forced out of the business.
This situation led to the establishment of Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887.
In 1890, the Anti-Trust Act was passed to prevent a company from growing into a monopoly or bigger companies from merging to form a monopoly. This had great impact on transportation industry, including the oil industry, as was the case with Standard Oil Company in 1911.