Beginning in 1827, land was surveyed between Philadelphia and Columbia in Lancaster County for a new transportation system intended to open Pennsylvania's interior to settlement and commerce, link Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and compete with New York's Erie Canal. In 1828, the Pennsylvania legislature abandoned canal plans on the advice of surveyors John A. Wilson, W. Hassell Wilson, and J. Edgar Thomson and chartered the 82-mile Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad, which became the second railroad line in the United States. From 1831 to 1834, skilled masons quarried nearby stone to build the bridge over Pine Creek between Lancaster and Chester counties. In 1833, entrepreneur William Noble built a foundry here, using waterflow created when the stone arch partially dammed the creek to power his works. On April 16, 1834, the locomotive Black Hawk became the first locomotive engine to cross the bridge, departing Lancaster at 8 AM with state legislators and others and arriving in Philadelphia at 4:30 PM. In 1838, Black business owners Stephen Smith and William Whipper of Columbia modified their lumber freight cars with secret compartments to transport formerly enslaved Africans to Philadelphia, making this rail line a fast and relatively safe route on what became known as the Underground Railroad. In 1846, the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad reorganized into the Pennsylvania Railroad with speed and efficiency as priorities, and in 1854 the track was removed from the bridge and the line shifted to the current right of way. In 2010, the present Amtrak line from Lancaster to Philadelphia was recognized by the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom as a mid-19th century pathway of the Underground Railroad.