Taking a Historic Road Trip: 1840s Style | Minerva’s Kaleidoscope

As we begin December, many of us are deep into the holiday travel season. Maybe you’re just back from a Thanksgiving road trip to visit family or planning one for the winter holidays. While I grew up in Connecticut, most of my extended family lived in the Midwest. Every year we piled into our minivan to make the twelve-hour cross-country trek to visit our relatives. My sister and I mastered backseat entertainment while my parents navigated, first using printed maps and then eventually GPS. Thinking about these childhood memories led me to wonder what road trip experiences were like in the past. I turned to the Library of Congress collections and found the digital collection American Notes: Travels in America, 1750 to 1920. This collection includes over 250 books written by individuals travelling through the thirteen colonies and later the United States. Looking through these books, I considered how the authors’ travel compared to modern road trips. Certainly, they couldn’t have stopped for burgers and fries!

A picture of a beige and red Shell gas station with 1970s era cars parked around it. — Rube and Sons Shell Gas Station. John Margolies, 1976. (John Margolies Roadside America Photograph Archive, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.)

I decided to read narratives published in the 1830s-1850s, the average decades of the collection. By this time, the United States had existed for over fifty years but was still a young and rapidly growing country. Because of the length of time needed and expense of travel in the mid-1800s, these authors were largely wealthy European visitors looking for entertainment or business opportunities. For the purposes of this blog, I read three travel narratives in the collection: America of the Fifties: Letters of Fredrika Bremer published by the American-Scandinavian Foundation, A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States by S.A. Ferrall, and A Tour in the United States by Archibald Prentice. What did their travel actually look like?

For European visitors in the 1840s, the most common place to start was New York City. Unlike today, these travelers couldn’t jump in a car and drive down the highway. But they could board a steamship to travel up the Hudson River. Swedish author Fredrika Bremer described the start of her trip in October 1849.

A paragraph from a book reading: "The river was full of life. Three-decked steamers, gleaming, like our own, with gold and white, passed up and down the river. Other steam-boats were pulling along with them flotillas of from twenty to thirty boats, laden with goods from the country for New York, or vice versa, while hundreds of smaller and larger craft were seen skimming along past the precipitous shores like white doves with red, fluttering neck-ribbons. On the shores glistened white country-houses and small farms." — America of the Fifties: Letters of Fredrika Bremer, page 6. New York, 1924. (American Notes: Travels in America, 1750 to 1920, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress.)

Fredrika took the steamship roughly sixty-five miles up the Hudson River to Newburgh, New York. But many travelers continued for another one hundred miles to Albany, the state capital. S.A. Ferrall described his 1832 journey on the same river in A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States.

The distance between New York and Albany is about 165 miles. The scenery on the Hudson is said to be the most beautiful of any in America, and I believe cannot be surpassed in any country… After a passage of about sixteen or seventeen hours, we arrived in Albany. The charge for the passage, including dinner and tea, was only three dollars; and the day following the cost was reduced, through the spirit of opposition, to one dollar. (21-22)

A watercolor of a river with green banks. In the middle of the river is a small steamboat. — Stoney Point, near Gibraltar, on the Hudson River, U.S. July 24th, 1846. Michael Seymour, 1846. (Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.)

Today, if you drove the 150 miles from New York City to Albany, roughly (although not perfectly) following the Hudson River, it might take you around three hours. Much faster than Ferrall’s trip! Steamboats weren’t the only way to travel though; many visitors boarded trains to see areas of the country not accessible by waterways. Archibald Prentice, who wrote the simply titled A Tour in the United States in 1848 described the flying speed of his train: “An average of fifteen miles an hour on railways…is considered a fair speed.”

Fredrika Bremer also describes the comfort (or discomfort) of train travel:

Tuesday, December 4. I have just returned from a little journey to Concord, the oldest town in Massachusetts and the residence of Ralph Waldo Emerson. We went there and arrived in the midst of a regular snowstorm. But the railway carriages are well warmed, and one sits there in ease and comfort, excepting that one gets well shaken, for the railroads here are much more uneven than those I have traveled on in Europe. (42-43)

A colorful print of an old-fashioned train pulling up to a small platform with a single building. Well dressed people head to the train from several points in the picture. — The 9:45 AM Accommodations, Stratford, Connecticut. 1868. (Prints and Photographs Collection, Library of Congress.)

Have you taken a boat or train while traveling with your family? They aren’t commonly thought of as part of a road trip! But without well-developed roads and highways, trains and steamships could get travelers further faster. However, travelers in the 1840s did sometimes use the road: visitors could book a ticket on a stagecoach or buy their own horse and wagon. Riding in a stagecoach or wagon wasn’t as easy as driving a car today. Archibald Prentice described the rocky stagecoach journey to cross the Allegheny Mountains on his way to Pittsburgh:

A page of a book reading: "At six o’clock we arrived at Cumberland and left the cars [railcars] for heavy stage coaches, in which we were to cross the Alleghanies. Our first ascent was along the banks of a rapid stream, climbing up and up for miles and miles together. I thought we must surely, with such a steep ascent so long together, be nearly attaining the summit, when after some two or three hours’ painful jolting over a road rougher than any that has existed in England these last forty years, we began to descend again, the wheels all locked – again to ascend for hours together, then to descend, then again to ascend – tired beyond all endurance, unable to sleep from the frequent jolting, and unable to keep awake from excessive fatigue. I never, in my life, and I have travelled much, encountered such a journey, and Mr. Brooks was almost beaten into a jelly." — A Tour in the United States, pages 38 – 39. London, 1848. (American Notes: Travels in America, 1750 to 1920, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress.)

By the end of his journey, Prentice was sick of traveling by stagecoach. He warned his readers:

Let no man visiting America trust himself in the heavy lumbering vehicles called stages. If he cannot find lake or river steam-boats, or railways, let him walk, if he wishes to spare himself from fatigue and to save time. With the choice of railroad and river we took the stage to Albany, and suffered accordingly. (107)

Without well paved or maintained highways, travel by road could be long, uncomfortable, and complicated. S.A. Ferrall bought his own horse and wagon and describes one eventful journey he took along his “ramble” through Indiana.

A page from a book reading: "Next morning we passed through Wilmington, but lost the direct track through the forest, and took the road to Versailles, which lay in a more northerly direction than the route we had proposed to ourselves. This road was one of those newly cut through the forest, and there frequently occurred intervals of five or six miles between the settlements; and of the road itself, a tolerably correct idea may be formed by noting the stipulations made with the contractors, which are solely that the roads shall be of a certain width, and that no stump shall be left projecting more than fifteen inches above the ground." — A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States, page 86. London, 1832. (American Notes: Travels in America, 1750 to 1920, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress.)

Can you imagine driving over stumps in the road over fifteen inches tall? That puts modern-day potholes to shame! All this difficulty was worth it for the views these travelers experienced, whether by steamship, railcar, or wagon. Ferrall describes one of the scenes he saw along his trip:

Fifteen miles further on, we passed the Little Falls. It was night when we came to them, but it being moonlight, we had an opportunity of seeing them to advantage. The crags are here stupendous – irregular and massive piles of rocks, from which spring the lofty pine and cedar, are heaped in frightful disorder on each other, and give the scene a terrifically grand appearance. (24)

Fredrika Bremer took a steamship up the Savannah River. She writes that she had been warned it would be a “slow and monotonous journey” but that “mile after mile and hour after hour” she was presented with beautiful scenery.

A page from a book reading: "only one scene, yet this scene was primeval forest. Masses of foliage from innumerable trees and shrubs and beautiful climbing plants seemed resting upon the water on each side of the river, the shores of Georgia and Carolina. Lofty, deep and impenetrable extended the primeval forest -as I was told, for many miles inland. — America of the Fifties: Letters of Fredrika Bremer, page 137. New York, 1924. (American Notes: Travels in America, 1750 to 1920, Rare Book and Special Collections Division.)

The “road trips” Fredrika Bremer, S.A. Ferrall, and Archibald Prentice took differed in many ways from travel across the United States today. These three authors wrote about their journeys through New England, the Midwest, and the South. Some of these authors explored areas of the country (like Minnesota) that weren’t officially states yet! By the end of 1850, there were only 31 states in the Union; the other 20 would be added over the next decades. This means, if you planned a road trip through the Untied States today, you could travel through states that didn’t exist when these three recorded their explorations. Not only that, but you could do it in less than half the time!

If you were to plan your own road trip, what sights would you hope to see? Mountains, forests, plains, or falls? How would you travel? Who would you write to about your adventures? Wherever you drive this holiday season, or whatever trip you plan in the future, I hope you don’t encounter fifteen-inch tree stumps or rocky stagecoaches along the way!

Many highway overpasses criss cross over each other, seen from above. — A highway in Honolulu, Hawaii. Carol Highsmith, 2023. (Highsmith Archive, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.)

To explore other road trips in the Library’s collection, check out the following resources:

To explore road-trip related images, check out the free to use and reuse sets of aircraft, cars, historical travel photos, and the Roadside America photograph archive.
For transportation maps, check out the Transportation and Communication digital collection.
For more narratives about travel and the early United States, explore the California as I Saw It: First-Person Narratives of California’s Early Years, 1849 to 1900, Capital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Regions, 1600 to 1925, and Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820 to 1910 digital collections.
For more road trip content take a tour of the following blogs: Celebrate National Road Trip Day with the American Folklife Center, 1920s Road Trip: The Lincoln Highway in Strip Maps, America on the Road: The Family Vacation by Car, The Mother Road Trip – Route 66 History and Activities, Going Places? Travel Tips in Newspapers, and Travel Virtually with Roadside America.

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