Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 13).djvu/219

This page has been validated.
THE PENNSYLVANIA CANAL
213

Portage Railway was planned which would follow, in part, the route of the old line. The hundreds who were connected with the manipulation of the expensive and cumbersome planes decried, of course, the new road, as we have noted so often in this series; the owners and operators of earlier methods of transportation scoffed at and opposed the new. But the new rail road was not built at once. The opposition carried weight. In April, 1846, however, the Pennsylvania Railway was incorporated to build a through thoroughfare from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. Of all routes the Juniata-Conemaugh passage-way offered an unrivaled course and was quickly chosen. The long contest over right of way in the Potomac Valley could not be reproduced here, as the canal was a state affair. In 1847, contracts had been let for sections eastward from Pittsburg and westward from Harrisburg. In two years the sixty miles between Harrisburg and Lewistown were opened; in the year following the portion from Lewistown to Hollidaysburg was completed. The western division was pushed up the Conemaugh with equal