River was advocated to
protect the trade of Baltimore and the South from the competition of New
York and the East which would inevitably result from the construction of
the Erie Canal and the Public Works of Pennsylvania. But discouragements
in plenty frustrated the plan. The cost was believed to be excessive and
the engineering difficulties were said to be almost insuperable. George
Bernard, a French engineer, was of the opinion that the high elevations
and scarcity of water along the route would prevent such a canal from
having much practical value. For these reasons Baltimore believed that
its position as a center for the rapidly developing Western trade was
slowly but surely slipping away.

This was the situation that led to the building of the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad. Two men--Philip E. Thomas and George Brown--were
the pioneers in this great undertaking. They spent the year 1826
investigating railway enterprises in England, which were at that time
being tested in a comprehensive fashion as commercial ventures. Their
investigation completed, they held a meeting on February 12, 1827,
including about twenty-five citizens, most of whom were Baltimore
merchants or bankers, "to take into consideration the best means of
restoring to the city of Baltimore that portion of the western trade
which has lately been diverted from it by the introduction of steam
navigation and by other causes." The outcome was an application to the
Maryland Legislature for a charter for a company to be known as "The
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company" having the right to build and
operate a railroad from the city of Baltimore to the Ohio River. The
formal organization took place on April 24, 1827, with Philip E. Thomas
as president and George Brown as treasurer. The capital of the proposed
company was fixed at five million dollars.

The construction of the railroad began on July 4, 1828. The venerable
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, then more than ninety years old and the
only surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence of fifty-two
years before, said on this occasion, as he laid the first stone: "I
consider this among the most important acts of my life, second only
to my signing the Declaration of Independence." His vision was indeed
prophetic.

It was determined that the first section of road constructed should
extend to Ellicott's Mills, twelve miles distant, but, owing to delays
in obtaining capital, the actual laying of the r