The Transportation RevolutionThe role of transportation improvements in the nineteenth century was famously labeled by George Rogers Taylor as "The Transportation Revolution." From the late eighteenth century going into the nineteenth century, America faced many transportation challenges - waterborne travel was often dangerous, rutted trails created bumpy and uncomfortable routes for wagons and stagecoaches, and overall transportation was quite slow and expensive. With the improvements of canals, steamboats, roads, and railways, the Industrial Revolution, as well as America itself, began to flourish.
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"Transportation developments were so revolutionary and so fundamental to the growth of the country that, in my judgement, they seemed to require the central position they have been given." |