Westward Road Research Paper

Unfortunately, with few exceptions, navigable rivers and lakes did not link up conveniently to form usable transportation networks. Before the war of 1812m some Americans considered canals as a likely solution, but enormous costs and engineering problems had limited canal construction to less than 100 miles. After the war, the entry of development opened the way to an era of canal building. New York State was most successful at canal development. In 1817 the state started work on on a canal that would run over more than 350 miles’ form Lake Erie to the Hudson River. About three thousand workers worked on digging a huge ditch that would eventually form the Erie Canal. The last leg was completed in 1825 and the first freight boat made its way from Buffalo to Albany and then on to New York

Railroads were faster and cheaper than canals to construct, and they did not freeze over in the winter. Steamboats played a vital role in the United States economy as well. They stimulated the agricultural economy of the west by providing better access to markets at a lower cost. Farmers quickly bought land near navigable rivers, because they could ship their products out to other countries. Due to the foreign trade it helped strengthen the trade relationship between New England and the Northwest. The transportation development had many positive economic changes in the United States.

During the 19th Century, the United States was downright obsessed with expanding westward. They believed it was their God-given right to span the entire continent. With more and more territories being added to the ever-growing roster, they needed a way to get from point A to point B quickly. The solution: The Erie Canal and the Transcontinental Railroad. The result: A huge growth in the U.S.’s economy.

In the early 19th century the transportation of goods between the east and west was expensive and time consuming. The normal way of transportation before the canal, was by horse drawn carriages. Then the bold idea of the Erie Canal was proposed to ease the tiring commute. The Erie canal was intentionally built to open the country west of the Appalachian Mountains to settlers. The canal would also provide a safe, cheaper way for produce to be carried to various markets. The canal then became the fastest way

Numerous factors brought unity to an adolescent nation which prevailed the confidence Americans needed for self-identity. As rapid mass-communication and transportation became easily available, any individual had the luxury of pursuing a life with personal freedoms just a grasp away. Moving west was made attractive for numerous reasons. For example, shipping products such as beaver fur enable a fashionable trend which sparked a demand in garments. The construction of the Erie Canal in 1825 that connected the Great Lakes with the Hudson River boomed the motivation, whether it was cost effective or not, completing miles into small distances, according to a journalist, “In thirty-six minutes we had passed near three miles, and reached the east of an embankment about 136 chains long across the valley of the Sedaqueda creek”. This economic process boomed with new opportunities for average Americans during the Era of Good Feeling. The early republic also had more busted effects from internal

The Erie canal helped shape America. The Northwest was expanding and needed to get their products to the east coast. However, they seemed to be lacking a water source. Since the Erie canal was connected from the Hudson river to the Great lakes this made it possible for farmers to transport goods to the east coast without a problem. The Erie canal paved the pathway to a more stable America and an economic growth by allowing transportation, trade, exporting and importing goods to be more accessible through the United States. “This great work will immortalize the present authorities of N.Y. will bless their descendants with wealth and prosperity, and prove to mankind the superiority wisdom of employing the resources of industry in works of improvement rather than destruction.” The canal combined trade and transportation allowing for commerce to help speed up the Industrialization in the United States after the Erie canal was

Transportation began to fuel the American economy during the Market Revolution by adding many different ways to transport goods and to get around the country. These roads were made of mud, which happened to be quite an issue during the different seasons. In the spring,all roads turned to mud, in the summer all roads were dust and in the winter these roads were snow and ice which made it difficult to travel on. The national road was made and was the only road funded by the national government, all of the other roads were funded by private investors. The national road opened up travel through the East and the West, which began to help foster a national community. Canals were starting to expand from not only running North and South, but creating ways to get East and West as well.The farmers began an eight year long project, which was taken over by Irish immigrants and they created the Erie

The Erie Canal was the first of many canals in the North that made water travel much easier for Americans. The part of the canal being built in the town of Lockport was said to be “seven miles in length, and partly through solid rock, at an average depth of twenty feet.” (279). Thought the canal was not very wide and deep, it made trade easier between western farmers and eastern manufacturers. The canal was very beneficial to the northern residents of America because the North was a more modernized and urban place than the South, relying heavily on trade with the west. The South had no needs for the canal due to their farming capabilities. Southerners relied on Atlantic shipping to receive goods and transport cotton to the North. By 1840, one million barrels of flour were being shipped via the Erie Canal. The Erie Canal was a great innovation that showed progress of development in the nation.

These enabled boats to travel upstream on rivers against the current, therefore increasing trade while at the same time improving inter and state transportation. The invention lead transport across the Great Lakes and, eventually, the Atlantic Ocean. Many did not predict that the canal would even be considered a paradox of progress, because people weren't fond during the nineteenth century if changing the environment for industrialization was a good idea. Nevertheless, the canal attracted a flood of farmers migrating from New England, giving birth to cities like Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse along its path. The completion of the Erie Canal set off a scramble competition among the other states to match New York's success. A great network of workers and professionals had to be trained as the canal era was arising, so the first generation of American professional engineers in canal building were from the late 1790's. By the time of the construction of the canals in 1817 started, America seized a small group of engineers, mostly focused in the New York area. Also, the Erie Canal was considered a significant training ground for American canal engineers, who eventually reached out to designing other canals and trained younger engineers who spread out through Pennsylvania and

Novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote that "Its water (served as a miraculous) fertilizer, (for) it causes towns with their masses of brick and stone, their churches and theatres, their business...to spring up." In its financing by the state government, the Erie Canal epitomized the developing transportation infrastructure. The vast expanse of the Erie Canal created a network that linked the Atlantic states with the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys that drastically reduced the cost of transportation. While canals connected waterways, the railroad opened vast new areas of the American interior to settlement, while stimulating the mining of coal for fuel and the manufacture of iron for locomotives and rails. By 1860, the railroad network had grown to 30,000 miles, a total more than the rest of the world 's railroads combined. The United States was able to grow following the War of 1812 due to innovations in transportation which allowed for cheaper, faster, and more efficient trading of goods within the United States.

This made it very hard for the individual states to come up with the money. Usually private investors took care of this issue (Roark, 260). Canals were another way for an increase in transportation. They would connect cities, such as the Erie Canal, which covered the area between Albany and Buffalo and connecting New York City to the area of the Great Lakes (Roark, 261). Railroads also came into the picture with the first railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio in 1829 (Roark, 262).

The canal and railroad systems, which grew up in the North, facilitated a much larger volume of trade and manufacturing while reducing costs a great deal. Great cities sprang up throughout the North and Northwest, bolstered by the improvement in transportation.

Some historians may construe westward expansion as beneficial to the United States, arguing that it reduced tensions within the nascent nation. Westward migration was glorified in the early 19th century as the way in which to achieve true freedom. The West was associated with economic opportunity and basic Republican ideals. Streams of individuals seeking prosperity and liberty flooded into the west after the Louisiana Purchase. With the rapid peopling of the west, new transportation systems arose in an effort to connect the new western territories to the southern and northern regions. Roads, steamboats, and canals such as the Cumberland Road and Erie canal were created to transport people and goods from one end of the United States to the other. The railroad was another invention that promoted unity.

State Route 75 (SR 75) is a 13-mile (21 km) expressway in San Diego County, California. It is a loop route of Interstate 5 that begins near Imperial Beach, heading west on Palm Avenue. The route continues north along the Silver Strand, a thin strip of land bordering San Diego Bay, through Silver Strand State Beach. SR 75 passes through the city of Coronado as Orange Avenue (pictured) and continues onto the San Diego–Coronado Bay Bridge over the bay, before joining back with Interstate 5 near downtown San Diego at a freeway interchange. Orange Avenue dates from the late 19th century, and the Silver Strand Highway was open to the public by 1924. What would become SR 75 was added to the state highway system in 1933 and designated Legislative Route

The Forty Acres Program can help me change the world by giving me the opportunity to give something great to the world. The Forty Acres Program can lead me to gain valuable knowledge through a fund into college, expanding my mind’s creativity and aspirations into what I can do to help and change the world in a positive way. What I plan on doing, once in college, is to obtain a good education and let that education lead me into the right path. As time passes in the future, I plan on donating to those who don’t have many material possessions of their own and try to create a smile of joy in their faces. Hopefully I convince and inspire them to do something positive and meaningful in their lives so that in their future they don’t step into the