From the Diary of Clara Linwood (an invented traveler)
1April 6, 1840, Philadelphia. I leave tomorrow for a teaching post in Cincinnati. My uncle, a merchant, says Pennsylvania spent years and millions of dollars on this Main Line because New York's Erie Canal, opened in 1825, was pulling the trade of the West to New York City. That canal follows a low, fairly level gap through the mountains. Pennsylvania has no such gap, so its route mixes canals and railroads.
2April 7, Columbia. We rode the railroad cars all day across rolling farmland and reached the Susquehanna by evening. Here we boarded a long, narrow canal boat. Our boat is built in sections that can be pulled apart, which puzzled me until a boatman explained what lies ahead.
3April 9, on the Juniata. Mules on the towpath pull us at a walking pace past mills and stone locks that lift the boat as the valley climbs. At night we sleep on narrow shelves in the cabin. A boatman told me the canal is usually drained or frozen from about December to March, and then freight waits for spring.
4April 10, the Allegheny Portage Railroad. At Hollidaysburg the sections of our boat were rolled onto railroad cars. The ridge ahead is far too high and steep for a canal. Instead, steam engines at the top of each inclined plane haul the cars up the slope with thick ropes, and between the planes, horses or small locomotives pull them along level stretches. Ten planes carry us up and down the mountain. From the summit I could see ridges rolling away like waves.
5April 11, Pittsburgh. The boat was joined together again at Johnstown, and we floated down to Pittsburgh, a smoky city of iron works and glass factories. In about four days I have crossed the state. Tomorrow I board a steamboat down the Ohio River.
6Note added in 1855. I made the trip east again this year, entirely by the Pennsylvania Railroad, which opened its line over the mountains in 1854 with a great curve near Altoona that lets trains climb without ropes. It took less than a day, in snow that would have frozen the old canal. Telegraph wires, which first reached Pittsburgh from Philadelphia in 1846, now run beside much of the track. In 1857 the state sold the Main Line to the railroad company.