Railroad Maps in Archives & Special Collections

This video highlights the exhibit materials of Railroad maps located in the UConn Archives & Special Collections including a conversation between archivist of Business, Labor, and Railroad Collections Laura Smith and Sendak Project archivist Clara Nguyen. The exhibition was featured in the Richard Schimmelpfeng Gallery at the Dodd Center for Human Rights from May 6th through August 12, 2022

Railroads brought the United States into the Industrial Age and the Modern Era. In the early 19th century we were still a new and underdeveloped nation, without the established roads and towns in Europe. Most commerce was centered on agriculture and small craft shops. The introduction of railroads made possible the Industrial Revolution and led to the country becoming a major industrial power, with an extraordinary impact on the culture, economy, industry and personal lives of the nation's people.

At the time of the first railroad charters Connecticut had an extensive turnpike network, numerous steamboat services in Long Island Sound, and two canal projects underway. While the first railroads formed along Connecticut's river valleys, ending in a steamboat port along the Sound, east-west rail lines were difficult because of the state's many waterways and inland hills. The New York & Stonington Railroad was Connecticut's first operating railroad, opening in 1837. By 1857 there were twelve railroads in Connecticut that went through 90 of the state's towns but no town was more than 14 miles from rail access. After the Civil War Connecticut could boast of 1000 miles of trackage. At its peak in the 1920s the railroads in Connecticut traveled through all but four of the state's 169 towns.

The railroad maps in the UConn Archives illustrate the wide impact the railroads had on New England. While at the time of their creation their purpose was mostly utilitarian, there are a myriad of uses for the maps today, including as sources for property searches, confirming borders, finding old lines now defunct, constructing rails to trails and for legal disputes in property ownership. Researchers regularly use the maps for the construction of model train layouts and for other personal railroad research.

The exhibit shows railroad maps and surveys from the 1820s to the 2000s, in the Railroad History Collections in Archives & Special Collections.

[jeromelandesman]

Are there railroad tickets in the archives?