Let’s go visit the in-laws!
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It’s Christmas, meaning millions of us will be traversing this beautiful country to be with loved ones, what a luxury!
Travel, like everything else, has evolved.
Many historians credit Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto with introducing the horse to North America in 1539 after landing near present day Tampa Bay. He and his 600 soldiers brought 220 horses onto the continent for the first time.
Europeans didn’t bring many things appreciated by Native Americans, mostly diseases, displacement and death, but the horse might be the one thing they were grateful for.
Before the equine, Natives were primarily nomadic hunters, gatherers and walkers. The Natchez Trace Trail through the south was a migratory animal pathway that natives and animals used for thousands of years. No one ventured down the trail to visit a distant relative because family units all lived together. The ancient trail would evolve into a trading route eventually used by frontiersmen and natives alike.
As the caucasian invasion continued, different forms of transportation emerged. Horses were now utilized to pull buggies, wagons and for distance stagecoaches.
The stagecoach played a significant role in the expansion westward. Lines would emerge where needed, transporting products and adventurers that helped settle the West. To think of the discomfort and extremes paying riders had to suffer through. In the movies have you ever seen a stagecoach pull over for a rest stop?
Alas, the stagecoach has gone by the way of the dodo bird and penny, but the Patee House Museum displays a spectacular looking one in its lobby.
To get customers as far west as possible, the advent of the steam-driven paddleboat allowing large amounts of goods and customers to be transported fairly cheap reigned for decades.
Advancement into an unknown waterway was risky to say the least. The first vessel to run from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, down the Ohio River to the mouth of the Mississippi was the steamboat New Orleans. Investors wanted to prove river travel to the frontier was safe and reliable. On this riverboat’s maiden voyage it was anything but.
On Dec. 11, 1811, at 2:15 a.m. the largest earthquake ever felt in the United States took place in Southern Missouri, with the epicenter located at New Madrid in the bootheel.
The New Orleans was caught right in the middle. The shaking was so violent it rang church bells in Boston! President Madison and wife Dolly were jolted awake sleeping in the White House.
Eye witnesses noted that jutting fault walls were so massive the Mississippi River flowed back upon itself, in other words creating massive waterfalls causing the River to actually flow backwards. To this day, the 15,000-acre Reelfoot Lake in Western Tennessee was created by that backflow.
Native Americans had never seen a riverboat, let alone felt an earthquake of that magnitude before. Now they believed the “great canoe,” was the new white man's curse causing their world to revolt.
Natives attacked the boat from shore as best they could ... another deadly gift from the invader.
All of this, of course, set back travel on the Mississippi for years. Nothing, however, could slow the constant endeavor of man wanting to profit from finding a better way of doing things.
The next major progression for long-distance travel would be the train. The Iron Horse ruled the continental United States as the ultimate travel choice for a good century.
On May 19, 1869, the golden spike was driven into the Utah sand at Promontory, completing the transcontinental railroad and signifying a change in travel and access.
In the mid-1800’s trains were used to move food products, settlers, manufactured items, troops and for the first time a significant number of pleasure travelers.
Families still mostly lived together, at least in the same city or on the family farm, but in the early 1900s moving away became an option. Mostly for the wealthy, sending a child off for educational purposes was now considered not only acceptable but affluent.
My father was a train nut. In the mid-60s, passenger rail travel was the way to vacation, our family took several. Plowing through the Canadian Rockies on a route that no longer exists was breathtaking, like riding in a giant picturesque snow globe that never ended.
During World War I, Kansas City set its one day record for trains arriving and departing, 271.
European train travel is still profitable and crowded. Cities and countries are closer than in the United States, travel is easier because massive amounts of infrastructure funds are spent to modernize and maintain, justified by usage.
As society and business evolved, people were on the move again. Families split up by miles could now stay artificially close by phone and soon computers, making in-person holiday visits more important, demanding and stressful.
The 1970s and on is considered the “golden age” for Holiday travel. Now it’s either fighting thousands of drivers on the highway -- where everyone seems to be headed to the same destination as you -- or you are in line at a busy airport.
Air travel is another story for another time, it’s amazing to me all the flying options one has and believe it or not, the quality of service you usually get.
Just think of those weary riders in a stagecoach with sore backs that needed a short break, perhaps contemplating the future where one day, hundreds of strangers might be riding in an aluminum tube flying through the air at hundreds of miles per hour.
So quit your complaining and get out there, make memories and bring back stories you can laugh at ... once you get home.
I know all of this is easy for me to say. I’m staying put this year ... Merry Christmas!
Bob Ford’s History will run each week in the Midweek, Weekender and Corner Post. More of Bob’s work can be found on his website bobfordshistory.com and videos on YouTube, TikTok and Clapper.
