Obscure American history trivia

They also only get paid a few hundred dollars for the job too.

 

Obviously. If they paid all those legislators a decent wage, it would bankrupt the state.

 

Pennsylvania doesn’t touch the Atlantic.

 

I stand corrected.

 

Technically true, but the Delaware River estuary is at sea level either at Philly or just downstream.

 

It was because of a lack of ocean access, partly, that led to the annexation of the Delaware Counties. And although they shared a governor, neither colony really wanted to be joined with the other so they had separate legislators. Even then, it wasn’t until after the war that Delaware became fully it’s own thing.

 

True. I’m just being specific about Atlantic Ocean versus Delaware Bay/River.

For the times of the late 1700s and earlier, boats were THE form of major commerce, long distance travel (international in particular) and trade. (And of course, hoofed power).

It’s interesting to see where and why certain cities are located. Richmond, Fredericksburg, and DC all lie along the “Fall Line” where the tidewater region ends and rocky falls and rapids begin.

And then in the 1830s came the iron horse…. I wonder what cities, particularly in the west, were strictly started as “railroad towns”. I imagine hundreds of them. Of course, thousands if you count towns beyond those that developed into major cities.

 

I read a book on the building of the Transcontinental Railroad (Empire Express is a great book and far better than the Stephen Ambrose effort.) And the railroad tacks pretty closely to where Interstate 80 runs today, mainly due to its proximity to water for the engines.
I've always been fascinated how some towns came to be and continue to be. Most them started out as crossing points of well-travelled roads or trails, hubs of rail or ship or riverboat traffic etc.

 

Fascinating. I had no knowledge of that.

Since they were the very first state, sounds like Delaware was highly motivated to hurry up and do it before getting assimilated.

I’ve also wondered how Delaware seems to be a “missing chunk” out of what would otherwise be Maryland. Without having studied it, I figured that came about mostly of development following waterways in my prior post. I know Maryland was settled from up the Chesapeake Bay and St Mary’s county.

 

Many Midwestern/Western cities sprung up where track construction had to stop for the winter, or because a substantial natural element had to be crossed, like the Missouri River at Bismarck. Laramie was a huge railroad hub, as was Ogden. Racing trains while driving on I-80 in Wyoming livens up a pretty boring drive from Evanston to Rawlins.

 

Atlanta started as a railroad town. It was the end of the line for the Western & Atlantic RR and was originally known as “Terminus.”

 

Hmm. I was thinking of a trivia question: what is the easternmost railroad town? Atlanta might be the largest.