Mercer's day well may be cited as the most active and, perhaps, the most ambitiously progressive in business affairs in the county's history. Space precludes enumeration and extensive description of all the enterprises then undertaken but passing mention may be made of a few. The improvement of transportation was a dominant motive. Canals, railroads, turnpikes all were instruments to that end. An early railroad was projected by the men of Waterford and incorporated in 1831 as the Loudoun Railroad Company to run from the mouth of Ketoctin Creek on the Potomac "passing Ketoctin mountain to the waters of Goose creek so as to intercept the Ashby's Gap turnpike road"; a curious and impractical route it may seem to us in the light of present conditions and that it was just as well that the project died in birth. In 1832 another railroad but sponsored in Leesburg, to be known as the Leesburg Railroad and to run from that town to the Potomac, also came to naught. At length in 1849 the Alexandria, Loudoun and Hampshire Railroad was incorporated and built, and under various names has been since continuously operated, thus giving the county its only railroad communication within its boundaries. In 1832 there was incorporated the Goose Creek and Little River Navigation Company to make those streams available as highways of traffic. Locks, dams, ponds, feeders, and other appurtenant works were ambitiously undertaken. With assistance from the State and the proceeds of the company's sales of stock much construction was accomplished; but during the Civil War the works were destroyed by the Federal armies and they never have been restored. The Catoctin Furnace Company was another ambitious project. Iron ore was mined in Furnace Mountain, opposite the Point of Rocks, and for a time shipped away for smelting. In 1838 a furnace for treatment of the ore was completed on the property and the ore smelted at first with charcoal made at the plant and later, as operations increased, with coke brought from a distance. The business was highly successful and profitable until ruined by the Civil War. It was this activity that caused the construction, in 1850, of the original Point of Rocks bridge across the Potomac.[150] [150] See Briscoe Goodheart in 4 Balch Clippings 33. Reference to some of the many turnpike companies of the period already has been made. Undertaken for the profit of the shareholders as well as the convenience of the people they, for the first time in her history, gave the county roads fit to bear heavy traffic and were another exemplification of the energy of the time.