This is a list of the earliest railroads in North America, including various railroad-like precursors to the general modern form of a company or government agency operating locomotive-drawn trains on metal tracks.
While private railroads are legally free to choose their jobs and customers, common carriers must charge fair rates to all comers.
Any effort to arrange early common-carrier railroads in chronological order must choose among various possible criterion dates, including applying for a state charter, receiving a charter, forming a company to build a railroad, beginning construction, opening operations, and so forth.
Name | Chartered | State | Opened | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
Union Canal Company of Pennsylvania | March 3, 1826 | Pennsylvania | 1830 | Chartered on May 30, 1811, to build a canal; authorized to build a railroad on March 3, 1826 |
Granite Railway | March 4, 1826 | Massachusetts | October 7, 1826 | Only authorized to carry freight until April 16, 1846 |
Delaware and Hudson Canal Company | April 5, 1826 | Pennsylvania | October 9, 1829 | Chartered on March 13, 1823, to build a canal; authorized to build a railroad on April 5, 1826 |
Danville and Pottsville Railroad | April 8, 1826 | Pennsylvania | September 24, 1834 | |
Mohawk and Hudson Railroad | April 17, 1826 | New York | September 24, 1831 | Carried only passengers for first few years of operation due to competition from the adjacent Erie Canal. |
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad | February 28, 1827 | Maryland | January 7, 1830 | First common carrier in the United States, chartered from its inception to haul freight and passengers on timetabled trains over vast distances with steam power, first to open for public service |
South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company | December 19, 1827 | South Carolina | December 1830 | Operated first steam hauled passenger train in the United States on a schedule. Known to the public as the Charleston & Hamburg Railroad. |
Ithaca and Owego Railroad | January 28, 1828 | New York | April 1, 1834 | |
Mill Creek and Mine Hill Navigation and Railroad Company | February 7, 1828 | Pennsylvania | November 3, 1829 | |
Tioga Navigation Company | February 7, 1828 | Pennsylvania | 1839 | Chartered on February 20, 1826, to build a canal or slack-water navigation; authorized to build a railroad on February 7, 1828 |
Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad | February 13, 1828 | Maryland | July 4, 1831 | |
Chesterfield Railroad | February 27, 1828 | Virginia | July 1831 | |
New Castle and Frenchtown Turnpike and Railroad Company | March 14, 1828 | Maryland | February 28, 1832 | Chartered on January 6, 1810, as the New Castle and Frenchtown Turnpike Company to build a turnpike; renamed and authorized to build a railroad on March 14, 1828 |
Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad | March 24, 1828 | Pennsylvania | October 18, 1832 | Part of the state-owned Main Line of Public Works |
Schuylkill Valley Navigation Company | April 14, 1828 | Pennsylvania | 1830 | Chartered on March 20, 1827, to build a canal; authorized to build a railroad on April 14, 1828; renamed Schuylkill Valley Navigation and Railroad Company on January 15, 1829 |
Schuylkill East Branch Navigation Company | April 14, 1828 | Pennsylvania | November 18, 1831 | Chartered on February 20, 1826, to build a lock navigation; authorized to build a railroad on April 14, 1828; renamed Little Schuylkill Navigation, Railroad and Coal Company on April 23, 1829 |
Mine Hill and Schuylkill Haven Railroad | April 15, 1829 | Pennsylvania | April 1831 | |
Northern Liberties and Penn Township Railroad | April 23, 1829 | Pennsylvania | April 1834 | |
Mount Carbon Railroad | July 15, 1829 | Pennsylvania | 1831 | |
Tuscumbia Railway | January 15, 1830 | Alabama | June 12, 1832 | |
Pontchartrain Railroad | January 20, 1830 | Louisiana | April 23, 1831 | |
Lexington and Ohio Railroad | January 27, 1830 | Kentucky | August 15, 1832 | |
Camden and Amboy Railroad and Transportation Company | February 4, 1830 | New Jersey | October 1, 1832 | |
Petersburg Railroad | February 10, 1830 | Virginia | October 1832 | |
Lykens Valley Railroad and Coal Company | April 7, 1830 | Pennsylvania | April 1834 | |
Beaver Meadow Railroad and Coal Company | April 7, 1830 | Pennsylvania | November 5, 1836 | |
Canajoharie and Catskill Railroad | April 19, 1830 | New York | 1839 | |
Boston and Lowell Railroad | June 5, 1830 | Massachusetts | June 24, 1835 | |
Petersburg Railroad | January 1, 1831 | North Carolina | 1833 | |
Paterson and Hudson River Railroad | January 31, 1831 | New Jersey | 1834 | |
Elizabethtown and Somerville Railroad | February 9, 1831 | New Jersey | August 13, 1836 | |
Saratoga and Schenectady Railroad | February 16, 1831 | New York | July 12, 1832 | |
West Chester Railroad | February 18, 1831 | Pennsylvania | October 1, 1832 | |
West Feliciana Railroad | March 5, 1831 | Louisiana | January 1835 | |
Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad | March 21, 1831 | Pennsylvania | March 18, 1834 | Part of the state-owned Main Line of Public Works |
Southwark Railroad | April 2, 1831 | Pennsylvania | 1835 | |
Cumberland Valley Railroad | April 2, 1831 | Pennsylvania | August 16, 1837 | |
Philadelphia and Delaware County Railroad | April 2, 1831 | Pennsylvania | January 17, 1838 | Renamed Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad on March 14, 1836 |
Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown Railroad | April 5, 1831 | Pennsylvania | June 6, 1832 | First common carrier in Pennsylvania. Earlier railroads were operated to haul minerals like coal and iron, but later in the decade would become modern common carrier systems hauling passengers and public goods. |
Winchester and Potomac Railroad | April 8, 1831 | Virginia (now partially West Virginia) | March 1836 | |
New York and Harlem Railroad | April 25, 1831 | New York | November 26, 1832 | |
Boston and Providence Railroad | July 22, 1831 | Massachusetts | July 28, 1835 | |
Boston and Worcester Railroad | June 23, 1831 | Massachusetts | April 16, 1834 | |
Clinton and Vicksburg Railroad | December 19, 1831 | Mississippi | May 15, 1838 | Reorganized by the Commercial and Railroad Bank of Vicksburg on 25 December 1833. Reorganized on 9 March 1850 as the Vicksburg and Jackson Railroad. Reorganized in January 1857 as the Southern Railroad of Mississippi. Reorganized on 28 January 1867 as the Vicksburg and Meridian Railroad. On 22 October 1885, the five foot gauge of the entire line from Meridian to Vicksburg, 152 miles including sidings, was changed to standard gauge of 4 feet 6 inches in about 16 hours. From 1889 the Meridian-Vicksburg Railway line was known as the Alabama & Vicksburg Railway line of the Queen and Crescent Route. [29] |
Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad | January 5, 1832 | Ohio | 1838 | |
Tuscumbia, Courtland and Decatur Railroad | January 13, 1832 | Alabama | August 20, 1833 | |
Wilmington and Susquehanna Railroad | January 18, 1832 | Delaware | July 14, 1837 | |
Lawrenceburg and Indianapolis Railroad | February 2, 1832 | Indiana | July 4, 1834 | |
Ohio and Indianapolis Railroad | February 3, 1832 | Indiana | 1851 | Renamed Jeffersonville Railroad on February 3, 1849 |
Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad | February 23, 1832 | Pennsylvania | November 14, 1833 | |
Baltimore and Port Deposit Railroad | March 5, 1832 | Maryland | July 6, 1837 | |
New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company | March 7, 1832 | New Jersey | September 15, 1834 | |
Portsmouth and Roanoke Railroad | March 8, 1832 | Virginia | July 27, 1834 | |
New Jersey, Hudson and Delaware Railroad | March 8, 1832 | New Jersey | 1872 | Merged into the New Jersey Midland Railway on April 26, 1870 |
Franklin Railroad | March 12, 1832 | Pennsylvania | September 10, 1839 | |
Delaware and Maryland Railroad | March 14, 1832 | Maryland | July 14, 1837 | Merged into the Wilmington and Susquehanna Railroad on April 18, 1836 |
York and Maryland Line Railroad | March 14, 1832 | Pennsylvania | August 23, 1838 | |
Liggett's Gap Railroad | April 7, 1832 | Pennsylvania | October 20, 1851 | Renamed Lackawanna and Western Railroad on April 14, 1851 |
Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad | April 14, 1832 | New York | April 19, 1836 | |
Saratoga and Fort Edward Railroad | April 17, 1832 | New York | October 15, 1848 | Reorganized as the Saratoga and Washington Railroad on May 2, 1834 |
New York and Albany Railroad | April 17, 1832 | New York | December 31, 1848 | Sold to the New York and Harlem Railroad on March 9, 1846 |
Watertown and Rome Railroad | April 17, 1832 | New York | October 1849 | |
Tonawanda Railroad | April 24, 1832 | New York | May 1837 | |
New York and Erie Railroad | April 24, 1832 | New York | September 23, 1841 | |
Brooklyn and Jamaica Railroad | April 25, 1832 | New York | April 18, 1836 | Leased by the Long Island Rail Road from opening |
Hudson and Berkshire Railroad | April 26, 1832 | New York | September 26, 1838 | |
Boston, Norwich and New London Railroad | May 1, 1832 | Connecticut | 1840 | Merged into the Norwich and Worcester Railroad on June 22, 1836 |
New York and Stonington Railroad | May 14, 1832 | Connecticut | November 17, 1837 | Merged into the New York, Providence and Boston Railroad on July 1, 1833 |
Portsmouth and Lancaster Railroad | June 9, 1832 | Pennsylvania | September 16, 1836 | Renamed Harrisburg, Portsmouth, Mountjoy and Lancaster Railroad on March 11, 1835 |
Williamsport and Elmira Railroad | June 9, 1832 | Pennsylvania | January 12, 1837 | |
Strasburg Rail Road | June 9, 1832 | Pennsylvania | 1837 | Still in operation as a shortline freight hauler and tourist railroad. Recognized as the oldest, continuously operating railroad in the United States as it still operates under its original 1832 charter. |
New York, Providence and Boston Railroad | June 23, 1832 | Rhode Island | November 17, 1837 | |
Detroit and St. Joseph Railroad | June 29, 1832 | Michigan | February 3, 1838 | Sold to the Central Railroad of Michigan on April 22, 1837 |
Selected railroads chartered since 1832:
Beaver Meadows is a borough in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The population was 897 at the 2020 U.S. census.
The Timeline of U.S. Railway History depends upon the definition of a railway, as follows: A means of conveyance of passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, also known as tracks.
The Lehigh Valley Railroad was a railroad in the Northeastern United States built predominantly to haul anthracite coal from the Coal Region in Northeastern Pennsylvania to major consumer markets in Philadelphia, New York City, and elsewhere.
A predecessor to the Class I Delaware and Hudson Railway, the 1820s-built Delaware and Hudson Canal Company Gravity Railroad('D&H Gravity Railroad') was a historic gravity railroad incorporated and chartered in 1826 with land grant rights in the US state of Pennsylvania as a humble subsidiary of the Delaware and Hudson Canal and it proved to contain the first trackage of the later organized Delaware and Hudson Railroad. It began as the second long U.S. gravity railroad built initially to haul coal to canal boats, was the second railway chartered in the United States after the Mohawk and Hudson Rail Road before even, the Baltimore and Ohio. As a long gravity railway, only the Summit Hill and Mauch Chunk Railroad pre-dated its beginning of operations.
The Leiper Railroad was a 'family business–built' horse drawn railroad of 0.75 miles (1.21 km), constructed in 1810 after the quarry owner, Thomas Leiper, failed to obtain a charter with legal rights-of-way to instead build his desired canal along Crum Creek. The quarry man's 'make-do' railroad was the continent's first chartered railway, first operational non-temporary railway, first well-documented railroad, and first constructed railroad also meant to be permanent.
The credit of constructing the first permanent tramway in America may therefore be rightly given to Thomas Leiper. He was the owner of a fine quarry not far from Philadelphia, and was much concerned to find an easy mode of carrying stone to tide-water. That a railway would accomplish this end he seem to have had no doubt. To test the matter, and at the same time afford a public exhibition of the merits of tramways, he built a temporary track in the yard of the Bull's Head Tavern in Philadelphia. The tramway was some sixty feet long, had a grade of one inch and a half to the yard, and up it, to the amazement of the spectators, one horse used to draw a four-wheeled wagon loaded with a weight of ten thousand pounds. This was the summer of 1809. Before autumn laborers were at work building a railway from the quarry to the nearest landing, a distance of three quarters of a mile. In the spring of 1810 the road began to be used and continued in using during eighteen years.
by John Bach McMaster, page 494, A History of the People of the United States, from the Revolution to the Civil War
The Lehigh Canal is a navigable canal that begins at the mouth of Nesquehoning Creek on the Lehigh River in the Lehigh Valley and Northeastern regions of Pennsylvania. It was built in two sections over a span of 20 years beginning in 1818. The lower section spanned the distance between Easton and present-day Jim Thorpe. In Easton, the canal met the Pennsylvania Canal's Delaware Division and Morris Canals, which allowed anthracite coal and other goods to be transported further up the U.S. East Coast. At its greatest extent, the Lehigh Canal was 72 miles (116 km) long.
Lehigh Gorge State Park is a 4,548 acres (1,841 ha) Pennsylvania state park in Luzerne and Carbon Counties, Pennsylvania. The park encompasses a gorge, which stretches along the Lehigh River from a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood control dam in Luzerne County to Jim Thorpe in Carbon County.
The Pennsylvania Canal, sometimes known as the Pennsylvania Canal system, was a complex system of transportation infrastructure improvements, including canals, dams, locks, tow paths, aqueducts, and viaducts. The canal was constructed and assembled over several decades beginning in 1824, the year of the first enabling act and budget items.
The Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway, also known as the Mauch Chunk and Summit Railroad and occasionally shortened to Mauch Chunk Railway, was a coal-hauling railroad in the mountains of Pennsylvania that was built in 1827 and operated until 1932. It was the second gravity railway constructed in the United States, which was used by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company to transport coal from Summit Hill downhill to the Lehigh canal.
The Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company (LCAN) (1988–2010) was a modern-day anthracite coal mining company headquartered in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. It acquired many properties and relaunched the Lehigh Coal Companies brand in 1988. The LCAN ran strip mining operations in the Panther Creek Valley east of Lansford, Pennsylvania along U.S. Route 209 with vast properties dominating the coal areas of Tamaqua, Coaldale, and Lansford.
The Little Schuylkill Navigation, Railroad and Coal Company (LSRR) was a railway company in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania in the 19th century. The main line ran from Port Clinton to Tamaqua, for a total of 28 miles (45 km).
Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company was a mining and transportation company headquartered in Mauch Chunk, now known as Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. The company operated from 1818 until its dissolution in 1964 and played an early and influential role in the American Industrial Revolution.
Josiah White (1781–1850) was a Pennsylvania industrialist and key figure in the American Industrial Revolution.
Mauch Chunk Ridge or Mauch Chunk Mountain is a historically important barrier ridgeline north of the Blue Mountain escarpment and 3rd parallel ridgeline south of the Nesquehoning Creek after Nesquehoning Mountain and Pisgah Ridge in the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians of Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Erskine Hazard (1790-1865) and his partner Josiah White were industrialists who developed infrastructure projects in Pennsylvania and throughout the Northeastern United States, which proved influential in ushering in the Industrial Revolution in the United States, which served as a foundation for the rise of the United States as the world's foremost economic power.
The Beaver Meadow Railroad & Coal Company (BMRC) was chartered April 7, 1830, to build a railroad from the mines near Beaver Meadows, Pennsylvania, beyond Broad Mountain along Beaver Creek to Penn Haven and along the Lehigh River through present-day Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania to the Lehigh Canal at Parryville, Pennsylvania. The settlement of Beaver Meadows dated to a 1787 land sale to Patrick and Mary Keene, thence to Nathan Beach.
The Hauto Tunnel, dug in 1871–72, was a 1.1-mile-long (1.8 km) single-track railway tunnel crossing under the barrier ridge of Nesquehoning Mountain between Lansford, Pennsylvania, in the Panther Creek Valley and the Central Railroad of New Jersey trackage near the dam of the Hauto Reservoir impoundment about 1.3 miles (2.1 km) above Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania. The tunnel was significant for cutting nearly 15 difficult mountainous miles (24 km) off the trip to the Lehigh Canal terminal or, by rail, to other eastern coal companies, in the era when anthracite was the king of energy fuels.
The Room Run Railroad was an early American gravity railroad with self-acting planes. It was built by the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company to transport coal from the Room Run Mine in Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania to landings at Mauch Chunk on the Lehigh River so it could be shipped on the Lehigh Canal to the Delaware River at Easton, Pennsylvania to markets in Philadelphia or New York City via the Delaware or Morris Canals.
The Mt. Carbon Railroad (MC) was one of what was known as lateral railroads built in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania in the 1820s and 1830s, and which were first constructed to accommodate the Schuylkill Canal with coal produced from the coal district south of the Mine Hill and east of the West Branch Schuylkill River, covering an area of between sixty and seventy square miles. The MC opened on April 19, 1831, between the settlement of Mount Carbon, Pennsylvania, on the Schuylkill Canal, north to the Norwegian Creek confluence, and following that tributary to beyond both the East and West Norwegian Creeks. In 1842, the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company (P&RR) made Mt. Carbon a termination point for its railroad line from Philadelphia in direct competition with the Schuylkill Canal. The P&RR leased the MC on May 16, 1862, and merged it into the parent organization on June 13, 1872.
The Panther Creek Railroad had its origins in 1849. The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N) constructed it between Lansford, PA and the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad operating as the Little Schuylkill Railroad in Tamaqua, PA. LC&N believed a direct route to take Panther Valley coal to eastern markets and a tunnel connecting Lansford to Hauto would open up possibilities with the Nesquehoning Valley Railroad. It also allowed the LC&N to cease coal shipments to the Lehigh Canal on the Summit Hill & Mauch Chunk Railroad, operating since 1827.
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(help)THE MAUCH CHUNK RAILROAD: Pennsylvania's first railroad and first anthracite carrier opened on Saturday, May 5th, 1827, when seven cars of coal passed from the Summit Hill mines of the L. C. & N. Company to their canal at Mauch Chunk, descending 936 feet in the nine-mile trip. Sixteen-year-old Solomon White Roberts, later a noted railroad engineer, who had helped his uncle, Josiah White, build the railroad, rode the first delivery of coal by rail. Loaded cars made the trip in a half-hour; mules returned three or four empties over the same route in three to four hours. Evidently the line had only seven (or twenty-one) coal cars at the opening, as that number brought coal to the canal on the following Monday and Tuesday also. These three days' deliveries, twenty-one cars, deposited nearly a thousand tons of anthracite into a chute over the canal boat landing. Loaded cars descending drew empties from the bottom of this chute on a self-acting plane. Built in a period of four months, on a turnpike previously used for coal wagons, the line, 12-1/2, miles with sidings, cost $38,726. Ties were on four-foot centers; strap rail was ⅜" x 1½".