Map of the Hamilton and Eaton Railroad With Its Connections

Unrecorded map of a short-lived railroad in Ohio and Indiana.

“Railroads were to the second half of the nineteenth century what the computer and telecommunication industries were to the final quarter of the twentieth – the drivers of economic change.” – Mark Reutter.

The 1850s was a period of extensive growth and development for the railroad industry across the United States. An influx of Eastern capital led to the consolidation of smaller, locally-owned lines and to the establishment of larger networks, developing the “railroads from a maze of provincial pikes to remarkably unified purveyors of mass transportation.” [ Reutter, xiii]

In particular, the Midwest was transformed from largely subsistence farming to cash cropping dependent on access to urban markets. Canals, though effective at moving bulk commodities, were expensive to maintain and suffered from geographic restrictions that railways did not. Thus, the ‘iron horse’ would be the primary vehicle for development and growth.

This previously unknown map of the Hamilton and Eaton Railroad (H&E) and its connections, published around 1854, is an excellent representation of these forces at work in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. In December of that year, the H&E was reorganized to incorporate three smaller operators providing service from Richmond, IN to Cincinnati, OH. The company’s routes, approximately 76 miles in total, are highlighted, but not labeled. They are shown connecting to a much broader and ambitious network of real and proposed railroad connections extending as far as Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Detroit.

According to the brief legend under the title, the widest, dotted lines reflect completed routes, whereas the tracked lines show those planned or under construction. Manuscript annotations construct trackage out of thin air, creating a new division for the H&E between Louisville and the Mad River Railway at Kenton. Another aspiring, though ultimately unrealized, line can be seen running eastwards from Cincinnati all the way to St. Louis – somehow crossing half a dozen or more rivers along the way!

Overall, the map provides a fascinating contemporary snapshot of the transportation network across the three states during the early 1850s. Several depicted railroads would either never be built or would exist only for a short period of time, before they were absorbed as part of the constantly changing ownership structures.

The aforementioned canal network is also well-represented, including the Illinois and Michigan (1848) near Chicago and the recently completed Wabash and Erie extension to Evansville (1853). Limited topographic detail is presented in hachure, highlighting a ‘Hilly Country’ in southwestern Ohio that would preclude railway and canal construction until appropriate technological advances had been made.

Sources: Railroads of North America Pennsylvania Railroad Corporate Geneology (Archived Site);  Dozen of Facts About Butler County and the Civil War; Cincy Rails;