Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
March 9, 1922 The steamship Virginia V was launched on the northwestern coast of Washington State. This steamship had been built with Douglas fir trees by Matthew Anderson of Anderson & Company for the West Pass Transportation Company. The 125-foot (38-meter) vessel was the last of that company’s working steamships named Virginia. Three months after being... Continue Reading →
March 8, 1887 James Buchanan Eads, an internationally renowned inventor and civil engineer, died at the age of 66 while vacationing in the Bahamas. Eads had been born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, in 1820. He was named after his mother’s cousin James Buchanan, who was a U.S. congressman at the time and would go on to... Continue Reading →
March 4, 1911 Anton L. Westgard departed from Denver, Colorado, for what would be a journey of nearly 10 weeks to the west coast. The vehicle that he used for this trip was a 3-ton (2.7-metric ton) motor truck built by the Sauer Motor Car Company of New York and known as the Pioneer Freighter.... Continue Reading →
February 26, 1925 In the southeast region of Virginia, Captain Albert F. Jester launched a then-innovative type of ferry service on the James River between the community of Scotland in Surry County on the southern bank and historic Jamestown Island (site of the first permanent English settlement in the Americas) in James City County on... Continue Reading →
February 25, 1832 The first railroad charter in Canada came into existence when the Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad (C&SL) was incorporated. The C&SL was not only Canada’s first public railroad but also one of the earliest railroads to be built in all of North America. Construction on the C&SL began in 1835. This railroad was... Continue Reading →
February 23, 1910 A new trolley system serving the city of Johnstown in Pennsylvania’s Cambria County was incorporated. The Johnstown Traction Company (JTC) took over the street railway operations of the Johnstown Passenger Railway Passenger Railway Company, which had been launched in 1883 to provide horse car services. (In the wake of the historic flood six... Continue Reading →
February 22, 1861 Edward Payson Weston began a 478-mile (769.3-kilometer) trip from the Massachusetts State House in Boston to Washington, D.C., to attend Abraham Lincoln’s first presidential inauguration – and he did so using only his two feet for transportation. The 21-year-old Weston undertook this ambitious trip in the first place because of a bet he... Continue Reading →
February 18, 1907 The U.S. Congress approved a measure allowing the Maryland-based Washington, Spa Spring and Gretta Electric Railroad (WSSGRR) to extend its streetcar operations into Washington, D.C. This act cleared the way for the last new streetcar company of the era to provide transit services in Washington, D.C., and the plan was to build the... Continue Reading →
February 16, 1843 Henry Martyn Leland, who would leave an indelible mark on the American automobile industry, was born in northeastern Vermont. As a young man, he worked as for the renowned tools manufacturer Brown & Sharp in Providence, Rhode Island. That job and others helped Leland refine a wide range of mass-production and mechanical... Continue Reading →
February 11, 1878 The Boston Bicycle Club was formally established. This club was the first official bicycle organization in the United States, and it took shape a year after the nation’s first periodical focused on that transportation mode – The American Bicycling Journal – had been likewise launched in the capital of Massachusetts. The Boston Bicycle... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 