The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) had long made a habit of being first. The B&O was founded by a group of Maryland bankers and merchants on Feb. 28, 1827, making it the country’s first railroad company. The ultimate objective was in the name: be the first railroad to reach the Ohio River.
That same year, out in Pennsylvania, the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company built a nine-mile railroad to transport coal up and down a large hill. The rail carts, however, were pulled up the hill by mules, with gravity as the driving force downhill. For the B&O, however, mules simply would not do. The Maryland owners eyed the relatively new face of industrial power: steam.
