- Home
- The Driftless Connecticut Series & Garnet Books
- history
- Post Roads & Iron Horses
Post Roads & Iron Horses
Transportation in Connecticut from Colonial Times to the Age of Steam
Series: The Driftless Connecticut Series & Garnet Books
Sales Date: 2011-12-15
The fascinating history of turnpikes, steamboats, canals, railroads, and trolleys in Connecticut
Post Roads & Iron Horses is the first book to look in detail at the turnpikes, steamboats, canals, railroads, and trolleys (street railroads) that helped define Connecticut and shape New England. Advances in transportation technology during the nineteenth century transformed the Constitution State from a rough network of colonial towns to an industrial powerhouse of the Gilded Age. From the race to build the Farmington Canal to the shift from water to rail transport, historian and transportation engineer Richard DeLuca gives us engaging stories and traces the significant themes that emerge as American innovators and financiers, lawyers and legislators, struggle to control the movement of passengers and goods in southern New England. The book contains over fifty historical images and maps, and provides an excellent point of view from which to interpret the history of New England as a whole. This is an indispensable reference book for those interested in Connecticut history and a great gift for transportation buffs of all kinds.
A Driftless Connecticut Series Book, funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.
Preface
Introduction: The Land and Its First Inhabitants
Colonial Connecticut
Turnpikes and Stagecoaches
Steamboats and Canals
The Railroad, Part I
The Railroad, Part II
Conclusion: A Period of Transition
Appendixes
Population by Geomorphic Region, 1800–1920
Corporation Charters
Connecticut Rail Lines
Notes
Bibliography
Index
RICHARD DELUCA has worked as a transportation planner in Connecticut for ten years and written on regional transportation for Connecticut History and the Encyclopedia of Connecticut History Online. He is the author of We, the People! Bay Area Activism in the 1960s, and lives in Cheshire, Connecticut.
"(T)he story isn't just about the technical side of the transportation evolution in the state. It's the story of the state itself, involving business, scandal, hard work, danger, and some of the great characters in American history, all of whom were a part of helping develop the intricate systems that put Connecticut residents on the roads and rails."
~Staff, Cheshire Herald
""DeLuca's descriptions of the challenges in building early roads around physical obstacles may pique a reader's interest in researching local transportation even further. This book, however, is about far more than roads. DeLuca discusses bridges, ferries, stagecoaches and turnpikes, steamships, and trains, and he takes readers on a journey through the historical highways and byways of colonization, industry, and transportation in Connecticut.""
~Maine Antiques Digest
""a handsome new volume in Wesleyan University Press's Driftless Connecticut Series.""
~Alan Bisbort, Sunday Republican American
""(T)he story isn't just about the technical side of the transportation evolution in the state. It's the story of the state itself, involving business, scandal, hard work, danger, and some of the great characters in American history, all of whom were a part of helping develop the intricate systems that put Connecticut residents on the roads and rails.""
~Staff, Cheshire Herald
""The fascinating history of our state's turnpikes, steamboats, canals, railroads, and trolleys (is) found in Post Roads & Iron Horses: Transportation in Connecticut from Colonial Times to the Age of Steam by Richard DeLuca. Containing more than 50 historic images and maps, it provides an excellent point of view from which to interpret the history of New England as a whole.""
~Connecticut Explored
"This is the first comprehensive history of the development of transportation in Connecticut, as well as the first major work of each of the fields covered in over a generation. Post Roads & Iron Horses strikes the perfect balance between rich detail and highly readable prose."
~Walter Woodward, Connecticut State Historian
"This is the first comprehensive history of the development of transportation in Connecticut, as well as the first major work of each of the fields covered in over a generation. Post Roads & Iron Horses strikes the perfect balance between rich detail and highly readable prose."
~Walter Woodward, Connecticut State Historian
Related Books
