George Washington urged easier transportation in 1786 to bring an influx of goods, and Baltimore's leading merchants and businessmen acted on that vision by founding the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in 1827 to connect the city to western markets. Built on North America's first common-carrier railroad, this route soon carried daily shipments of coal, wheat, and lumber from rural areas to the port of Baltimore, helping secure the city's prominence in world trade. Waterpower and the railroad made the Patapsco Valley an ideal industrial corridor, where established factories expanded, new factories were built, and mill communities were linked to one another and to the outside world through reliable delivery of materials and shipment of products. Until 1949, daily passenger trains also moved mail, passengers, and newspapers through the valley, while railroad stations provided telegraph services. The early railroad left enduring physical remains along the valley, including stone bridges, walls, culverts, and the stone abutments of the Patterson Viaduct, completed in 1829 to carry tracks across the Patapsco River, destroyed by flood in 1866, replaced by an iron truss Bolman Bridge, and bypassed after a 1903 realignment with a new bridge built upstream.