Transportation in the early 1800s

The first cars have always been interesting to me.  Quite a few years ago, my grandmother told me about the first car to come to her town.  It would have been around 1915.  She told me about how her friends and she would play in the streets, and when the car came by, her mother would yell to get out of neighborhood would be yelling.  Imagine being there for that!

As I read A History of US, volume 4, I got to the part about transportation via canals and rivers.  I was fascinated to learn about goods being taken down the Ohio River, to the Mississippi, down to the Gulf of Mexico, around Florida, and up the Atlantic to end up in New York.  Imagine it being cheaper to transport goods to New York in that way than across just a fraction of that amount of land!

After hearing my grandmother’s story about the first cars and thinking how incredible that would be to witness, I guess it’s no wonder that this small bit of history, having to do with transportation, would fascinate me.

As a class, this year, I’d like to discuss transportation (even the roots of the word are awesome!) and what it was like in the early 1800s.  (Standard 116B Word Analysis Skills, R6A12, RA13)  Using a map, I’d like to do a lesson on the word roots and on the route goods would take from Ohio to New York.   The students will be able to make inferences (DOK 2) and generalizations about why it was cheaper to ship via the rivers and oceans vs. land.  We can identify the route and measure distances (DOK1) taken.   They will be able to compare the distances (DOK 3) of the various routes that could be used – land vs. water.  Using the maps, they may even be able to create alternate routes (DOK 4).  I’m also hoping for some good discussion on what land routes might have been like in the early 1800s.  If I can find a primary source about transportation during this time period, that would be the icing on the cake!

Domain 1a,d,e,f, 2a,b,c,d, 3a,b,c,d,e, 4a,f