Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 10).djvu/84

84 grew, and the newer the means of transportation which were coming rapidly to the front. This was true, even, from the very beginning. The road was hardly a decade old in Pennsylvania, when two canals and a railroad over the portage, offered a rival means of transportation across the state from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh. When the road reached Wheeling, Ohio River travel was very much improved, and a large proportion of traffic went down the river by packet. When the road entered Indiana, new plans for internal improvements were under way beside which a turnpike was almost a relic. In 1835–36, Indiana passed an internal improvement bill, authorizing three great canals and a railway. The proposed railway, from the village of Madison on the Ohio River northward to Indianapolis, is a pregnant suggestion of the amount of traffic to Indiana from the east which passed down the Ohio from Wheeling, instead of going overland