The Gauge War: Erie Tears Up the Tracks

In December of eighteen fifty-three, the citizens of Erie, Pennsylvania went to war with a railroad. Not metaphorically. They physically tore up the tracks.

The issue was railroad gauge, the distance between the rails. Two railroad companies passing through Erie had laid their tracks at different widths, which meant passengers traveling between Buffalo and Cleveland had to stop in Erie, unload their luggage, walk across town, and board a new train. Erie's merchants, hotel owners, and restaurants loved this arrangement. Every stranded traveler was a customer. The city was making good money being an enforced layover.

When the railroad companies announced they would standardize the gauge and eliminate the transfer stop, the mayor of Erie deputized a hundred and fifty special constables and sent them to cut sections out of the railroad bridges at the edge of town. He actually had the bridges physically dismantled. Seven miles away that same night, residents of a neighboring township went out with crowbars and pried up track on their own.

The most dramatic moment came on December twenty-seventh, when a train full of railroad officials and workers tried to push through. A crowd met them outside town, pulling up rails as fast as they could. A railroad official fired a pistol into the crowd, knocking a man unconscious. The crowd, believing him dead, chased the official back onto his train and forced it to reverse at full speed toward the state line.

The standoff lasted two months. In the end, February of eighteen fifty-four, the railroad ran its first through train and Erie lost its captive passenger market. But the protests continued for years. Buildings were vandalized, a local newspaper's office was burned, and the Presbyterian church split in two over the question.

Erie fought the inevitability of rail connectivity with physical force. The tracks won.