In the early 1800s, heavy travel between the populous Mid-Atlantic region and Baltimore and Washington required passing through Delaware, where poor roads and a 300-mile water route around the Delmarva Peninsula made travel difficult. Early alternatives included the New Castle and Frenchtown Turnpike in 1816 and the Delaware and Chesapeake Canal in 1829, but turnpikes were hard to maintain and canals froze in winter. Steam transportation led to the New Castle and Frenchtown Railroad, a nearly straight sixteen-mile line from New Castle on the Delaware River to Frenchtown, Maryland, on the Elk River at the head of the Chesapeake Bay, allowing travelers from Philadelphia to continue by steamboat to New Castle, by rail to Frenchtown, and then by steamboat to Baltimore. Among the first railroads in the United States and the first in Delaware, it began construction in July 1830, with the route divided into 17 sections for grading, embankments, drains, and culverts. Built in the style of early English railroads, it used stone blocks set in sand and gravel to support wooden rails capped with thin iron bars imported from England, and fifty-eight thousand stones were needed along the roadbed. Full passenger service opened on February 28, 1832, and the horse-drawn trip took only an hour and twenty minutes. A steam engine ordered in June 1831 from Robert Stevenson of New Castle, England, was to make its maiden voyage on September 1, 1832. By 1837, the line had added a second track, four daily trains, and newer engines including the Maryland, New Castle, and Virginia. Its role as a major north-south link ended when a rival all-land rail line from Philadelphia to Baltimore was completed in 1837, and Delaware's first railroad was discontinued in 1853.