A Boom for Cumberland

The National Road and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad met at Cumberland’s first railroad station in 1842, making this spot a transfer point where passengers and freight shifted between railroad cars and coaches or wagons for westbound travel, and the reverse for eastbound trips. National Road traffic flourished, and Cumberland’s population nearly doubled by 1850 during a brief but lively boom as old businesses expanded, new ones thrived, and construction filled the city with new warehouses, hotels, and repair shops. Travel on the National Pike had already been strong before construction of the B&O Railroad, and throughout the first three weeks of March 1848, stage coaches carried 2,586 passengers through Cumberland. One local old-timer claimed to have seen fifty-two six-horse wagons on the road at one time and at least 4,000 head of western cattle quartered at a single place. In 1853, the railroad was completed to Wheeling, West Virginia, and travel on the National Road declined as faster steam railroads replaced horse-drawn stagecoaches.

Cumberland, Maryland · United States