Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad

Look at the ground near this edge of Fairmount Park and you may find traces of the stone blocks that once anchored the rails of one of America's earliest railroads. The Philadelphia and Columbia was authorized by the Pennsylvania Legislature in eighteen twenty-eight and finished in eighteen thirty-four, running eighty-two miles west to the Susquehanna River at Columbia. It started with horses pulling cars along the tracks, then converted to steam.

It was part of a larger, state-owned transportation network, including the Pennsylvania Main Line of Public Works canal system, built to compete against New York's Erie Canal and keep trade flowing through Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania Railroad absorbed the line in eighteen fifty-seven. Most early American railroads have vanished completely from the landscape, but original stone block rail supports are reported to survive here in Fairmount Park, a rare physical remnant of the country's first generation of iron-road travel.