The Paths of Inland Commerce; A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and WaterwayHulbert, Archer Butler
History
The Paths of Inland Commerce; A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway
Hulbert, Archer Butler
Transportation -- United States -- History
The history of the early phase of American transportation is dealt with
in three general works. John Luther Ringwalt's Development of
Transportation Systems in the United States (1888) is a reliable summary
of the general subject at the time. Archer B. Hulbert's Historic
Highways of America, 16 vols. (1902-1905), is a collection of monographs
of varying quality written with youthful enthusiasm by the author, who
traversed in good part the main pioneer roads and canals of the eastern
portion of the United States; Indian trails, portage paths, the military
roads of the Old French War period, the Ohio River as a pathway of
migration, the Cumberland Road, and three of the canals which played a
part in the western movement, form the subject of the more valuable
volumes. The temptation of a writer on transportation to wander from his
subject is illustrated in this work, as it is illustrated afresh in
Seymour Dunbar's A History of Travel in America, 4 vols. (1915). The
reader will take great pleasure in this magnificently illustrated work,
which, in completer fashion than it has ever been attempted, gives a
readable running story of the whole subject for the whole country,
despite detours, which some will make around the many pages devoted to
Indian relations.
For almost every phase of the general topic books, monographs,
pamphlets, and articles are to be found in the corners of any great
library, ranging in character from such productions as William F.
Ganong's A Monograph of Historic Sites in the Province of New Brunswick
(Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Second
Series, vol. V, 1899) which treats of early travel in New England and
Canada, or St. George L. Sioussat's Highway Legislation in Maryland and
its Influence on the Economic Development of the State (Maryland
Geological Survey, III, 1899) treating of colonial road making and
legislation thereon, or Elbert J. Benton's The Wabash Trade Route in the
Development of the Old Northwest (Johns Hopkins University Studies in
Historical and Political Science, vol. XXI, 1903) and Julius Winden's
The Influence of the Erie Canal upon the Population along its Course
(University of Wisconsin, 1901), which treat of the economic and
political influence of the opening of inland water routes, to volumes of
a more popular character such as Francis W. Halsey's The Old New York
Frontier (1901), Frank H. Severance's Old Trails on the Niagara Frontier
(1903) for the North, and Charles A. Hanna's The Wilderness Trail, 2
vols. (1911), and Thomas Speed's The Wilderness Road (The Filson Club
Publications, vol. II, 1886) for Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky.
The value of Hanna's work deserves special mention.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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