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How fast could you travel across the U.S. in the 1800s?
Today, we shrug off the convenience of long-distance travel as part of life, but it wasn't that long ago that simply getting there required a huge investment of time and money.
Wed, Dec 26 2012 at 11:48 AM
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All photos: Public domain
The experience of traveling can often feel frustratingly slow. But despite the traffic jams on the roads and congested airports, we don’t know how good we have it today compared to our great-great grandparents.
Indeed, in this age of instant digital communications and fast travel, we tend to forget that not so long ago traveling distances were subjectively very different. In the 1800s, for example, traveling a few hundred miles across the U.S. meant taking a steam-powered train, and the trip could take days. Going from coast to coast, which now takes less than a day, could take weeks.
The best way that I’ve found to understand how fast one could travel across the country back in those simpler, but slower, times is these maps from the 1932 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States. All the maps use New York City as a starting point on the East Coast, and show how long it would take to move westward across the country.
As you can see in the map above, in 1800, it took a whole day to barely get outside of the city; two weeks to reach Georgia or Ohio; and in five weeks, you could just about get to Illinois and Louisiana.
About 30 years later, in 1830, train travel in the U.S. was almost twice as fast (a huge improvement!), but still quite slow by modern standards. Rather than taking two weeks, going to Georgia or Ohio from New York City took one week, and in two you could get to the state borders of Louisiana, Arkansas and Illinois. Getting to Minnesota would have taken about five weeks!
I’m sure you immediately noticed the major change in the map above. By 1857, which is still within one lifetime from someone born around 1800, travel by rail (the fastest way to get around at the time — remember that the Wright brothers were not even born yet and air travel was far off in the future) had gotten significantly faster.
You could now do in a day or two what used to take a couple weeks. With a week's travel you could get to the eastern border of Texas, and in about four weeks you could get to California. Only the Northwest took longer than a month to reach from New York City.
If the latest map wasn’t a big enough step forward for you, take a look at this one from 1930. It now only takes two days to get across half the United states by train, and three to four days to get to the other coast from New York City. It's hard to overstate how big a difference this makes in how people perceive the world. There's a big difference, both for families and businesses, between spending two months traveling back and forth across the country vs. less than a week!
Thanks to the University of Nebraska for providing some of the information referenced in this article.
Related on MNN: The best long-haul train journeys in the world
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Agreed with Daniel Kim. Hiking is a part of good lifestyle and we should do it
Totally agree with Daniel Kim: A wonderful account of a long trip to Nevada (Carson Territory, I think) from Missouri is found in Mark Twain's book "Roughing It".
Around 2001, my car broke down in Flagstaff, AZ. It was too expensive to repair, so as a broke college student the cheapest way to get home to Cleveland, OH was via the Amtrak train that ran through the city. It took more than 3 days to get home via train. Shame that rail travel hasn't improved since about 1930.
How about a modern version for the planet, measured in hours?
The author of this article is confused, though. In 1800 there was no train travel. in 1830 there was still almost no train travel. Increase in travel speed was largely down to improvements in infrastructure (roads/canals/bridges/ferries/inns, etc.)
The author writes of train travel in the 1800's not the specific year of 1800.
You are correct. I still enjoyed the maps and it did force me to read a little bit of American history to refresh my memory.
Here's a link to a digital copy of the atlas:
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/genpub/abl7462.0001.001/390?page=root;size=1...
Hey, this is a great little article. Could you post a link to the original source of those maps? I can't quite find them on the UNL website, though I've found similar stuff.
Thanks!
Nobody was going anywhere by rail in 1800. The first successful steam locomotive was built in England in 1804, and the first commercial railroad in the Unites States was opened in 1810. It was just a few miles long, The first interstate railroads did not exist before the late 1820's.
My car in college was a 1967 Land Rover, which topped out at around 50 mph. I drove it up to Canada once, and while I had many fists shaken at me (and ruder gestures!), I actually learned to appreciate the journey itself over being obsessed with time. Most people these days speak in units of time when asked how far something is. I felt more connected to the journey itself and where I was, when making "good time" wasn't an option.
Now it takes 6 hours to get from New York to California, and people still whine about baggage fees and 30 minute flight delays. Stick all those people on a steam train for 5 weeks to LA and they will never complain again
The problem is that in the last 50 years, the travel NYC-LA time has actually increased (if you include security lines) and the level of comfort and amenities has decreased.
In 1999 I walked across the US from portland to portland. It took me 6 months and 3 days.
Pre railroad travel by wagon averaged 10 to 15 miles a day. With a wagon and team of mules or oxen, the speed was no more than three to four miles an hour with frequent stops to allow the teams to rest and feed and drink water. With the invention of the Stagecoach, one could travel 70 - 120 miles a day, as the horse could average 7 to 10 miles an hour. Horse teams were changed every ten miles.
A wonderful account of a long trip to Nevada (Carson Territory, I think) from Missouri is found in Mark Twain's book "Roughing It". The story of this trip makes up the beginning of the book, and is a lot of fun to read. It was not an easy ride, by any means, and consisted of incredible boredom punctuated by life-threatening danger. Plus more boredom. Still, Twain makes it worth the read. (find it at Gutenberg, or there is an excellent audio version at LibreVox.
I do allot of hiking because I like to walk in the natural unreachable wilderness I know how long it takes to get from point A to point B without modern roads and transport I laugh ...loudly... when people complain of traffic congestion I know what it takes to travel just 10 miles in one day and I laugh at them.