In the early 1800s, heavy travel between populous East Coast cities had to pass through Delaware, where poor roads and a long water route around the Delmarva Peninsula made transportation difficult. Early alternatives included turnpikes and canals, but turnpikes were hard to maintain and canals froze in winter. Steam power led to the New Castle and Frenchtown Railroad, which ran nearly sixteen miles from New Castle on the Delaware River to Frenchtown, Maryland, on the Elk River at the head of the Chesapeake Bay, linking steamboat travel from Philadelphia to Washington by way of New Castle, Frenchtown, and Baltimore. Among the first railroads in the United States and the first in Delaware, it used imported English locomotives and coaches built locally in the style of stagecoaches, while early freight cars were little more than wagons. Construction began in July 1830, with the route divided into seventeen sections, and the line was built with stone blocks, wooden rails, and thin iron bars imported from England. It opened to full passenger service on February 28, 1832, and the horse-drawn trip took about an hour and twenty minutes. A steam engine ordered in 1831 was intended to begin service on September 1, 1832, and by 1837 the line had a second track, four daily trains, and newer engines built by the New Castle Manufacturing Company. That same year, however, completion of a rival all-land rail line from Philadelphia to Baltimore made the steamboat and railroad combination obsolete, and Delaware's first railroad was discontinued in 1853.