ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the geographic information systems to produce shapefiles that show the location and extent, year-by-year, of canal, river steamboat and rail transportation in the contiguous United States from their inception through 1911. George Rogers Taylor referred to them as the 'Transportation Revolution'. Much earlier, though, Thomas Jefferson's Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, argued to Congress that 'good roads and canals will shorten distances, facilitate commercial and personal intercourse, and unite, by a still more intimate community of interests, the most remote quarters of the United States'. The chapter discusses the transportation shapefiles of navigable rivers, canals, and railroads for the United States before First World War. Transportation infrastructure has played and continues to play a vital role in economic growth and development by linking supply with demand and integrating spatially separated markets. Waterways have always been barriers to overland transportation.
