Railroads & Sternwheelers

June 28, 2009

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Profile America — Sunday, June 28th. Nostalgia for old forms of transportation highlights two festivals winding up today. In Cascade Locks, Oregon, Sternwheeler Days will celebrate the river boats that plied the nation’s waterways for more than a century. In Galesburg, Illinois, the focus is on the town’s railroad heritage, which goes back to the 1850s, when it became an important hub for East-West traffic. As such, the town was the site of the fifth and most famous of the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. At the time of the Lincoln-Douglas debate, there were some 27,000 miles of railroad track in the U.S. Track miles peaked in 1930 at 430,000. Today, railroads run on less than half that mileage. Profile America is a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau, now preparing for the 2010 Census.

Sources: Chase's Calendar of Events 2009, p. 331, 332
Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, p. 731, 728
Statistical Abstract of the United States 2009, t. 1080
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2009edition.html