Over the past 75 days or so I have been doing research about the Delmarva Peninsula. Many of us us who live there, wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. Some who are born there wants to get off as soon as possible. Some of us who leave wants and will eventually come back.
Anyway from the research I have discovered a lot about the region that I didn’t know. Many of the towns began during the Colonial Period as port towns on a river or on the Chesapeake. Others began as what I call a Tavern Town, one that was a stopping point on an overland road.
But there are many towns, especially in Southern Delaware and the southern Eastern Shore, that were created as railroad towns. Some were even created and built by a railroad when they decided to put a station stop. Even in 2007 some of these towns till have a train pulling through their town on a regular basis.
Trains were big during the last half of the 19th century and stay that way until around the World War II period. That’s when the automobile and other over the road transportation, including air travel, took the United States by storm. And from what little research I have done on this a lot of that was done to help the automobile manufacturers.
It’s really a shame, since it seems to me that rail transportation still can be a environmental way to move people and merchandise from one location to another.
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