The Not-So-Iron Horse

By Duncan Virostko, Museum Assistant

If you were sitting in the taproom of Dunham Tavern sometime between 1834 and 1842, you might have heard the sounds of horse hooves, the jangling of the harness, and rumbling that heralded the approach of new visitors to Rufus Dunham’s cozy respite from the privations of early American travel. But you would probably be surprised when the vehicle arrived was not a stagecoach, but something entirely different! Instead, you would be looking at the passenger car of Cleveland's first, and short lived, railroad: The Cleveland and Newburgh Railway.

Early Baltimore & Ohio RR Horse-Drawn, Train, ca. 1830.

To our modern eyes, a horse powered railroad might seem absurd. Yet in 1834 it was in fact a common and well established technology. The Baltimore & Ohio, the first successful railroad in the United States, had been laid down only four years before, and was initially horse powered, with steam locomotives still being experimental.  “One horse was enough for any carload”, according to early settler George F. Marshall. Another, John C. Covert differed, declaring they were “drawn by two horse, tandem”. Tandem, in this case, refers to driving the pair of horses in a single file line, vs side by side. In any event, this showcased the primary benefit of a horse drawn railroad: unlike a traditional stage coach or heavy wagon, which would typically require a four horse team to move, rail cars have a much lower coefficient of friction making them easier to pull. This was well understood at the time, and England had long had horse-drawn tramways serving mines since the Renaissance. Unlike road-bound vehicles, railroads were also all-weather: train cars could not bog down in the mud on bad roads.

The Cleveland & Newburgh Railway ran from atop Cedar Hill down Euclid to the south west corner of Public Square. The tracks ran down the south side of  Euclid until it reached Dunham Tavern, at which point it switched to the north side of the street, continuing on that side until what is now East 46th Street, at which point it switched to the center of the street until it reached Public Square. The tracks of the line were made of 4x8 pieces of wood, with the rails dovetailed into ties set at 3ft intervals. A strip of hard wood, either maple or beech was then placed on to of the rails to strengthen them. This was not far from steam railroad practice at the time, with those lines only differing in having the strip be made of iron. These iron strips had a dangerous flaw: repeated wheels running over them would eventually cause them to curl upwards into “snakeheads” which tore into cars bottoms causing train wrecks. With no worries about “snakeheads”, and no steam locomotives to suffer boiler explosions, the Cleveland & Newburgh would have been one of the safer early lines to travel aboard.

The primary cargo of the railroad was stone and lumber, taken from the blue stone (a type of sandstone) quarries located near Cedar Hill and a nearby sawmill. The line’s charter noted it’s eastern terminus as Lot 413 in Newburgh Township, near what was then the corner between four townships: Cleveland, Newburgh, Euclid and Warren. Hence, the railroad that served it was called the Cleveland & Newburgh, despite being almost entirely located in Cleveland’s east side.

The Cleveland & Newburgh was not the only gravity-worked railway in Cleveland. This inset of a  1835 map by Ahaz Merchant, builder of the C&N, shows another line running across the Columbus St. Bridge, site of the famous "Bridge War" between Cleveland & Ohio City residents. Brakemen ride on the back of each gondola car to control their descent down Columbus St., from the aptly named Gravity Place. The bridge was built by James S. Clark, a backer of the Cleveland & Newburgh, and designed by architect Nathan Hunt.

Loaded gondola cars would run by gravity down the hill, ending their run at the base of the hill at what is now 101st St. . Unloaded cars would probably have been taken by horse to the top of the hill for loading. Trains would then run by horse-power along Euclid to Public Square. From there, the stones and logs could be unloaded to be used in constructing buildings, piers, and docks in Cleveland.

Passenger trains set off from East 101st Street at the Billings Hotel, whose stables provided horses to the line. The hotel predated the line, and served as a ready-made station for passengers and housing for railroad employees. It was located not far from the small neighborhood of Doan’s Corner, situated between 105th and 107th st, named after early settler Nathaniel Doan. In later years, the Hotel became known simply as The Railroad Hotel. Charles Asa Post, prominent early historian of East Cleveland would late be born in this house, which was his family’s home from 1846 onward, and spent his boyhood playing in the massive barn that once housed the railroad’s horses.

A round trip to Doan’s Corner from Public Square and back again cost ten cents, or about $3.57 in 2024, compared to the $5.00 fare such a trip would now cost you on the RTA. On opening day, July 4th 1835, Conductor Silas Merchant collected some $125 worth of fares… from roughly 1,250 passenger(assuming all of them took round trips)! This would have been about 1/5th of Cleveland’s population at the time.

Forrest City house ca. 1854. This building replaced the Cleveland House-City Hotel, the western terminus of the Cleveland & Newburgh RR. Note the horse drawn omnibus in front of hotel lobby, which also replaced the railroad.

The Western terminus of the Cleveland & Newburgh was the barns behind the Cleveland House, later The City Hotel, another early Cleveland hotel-tavern built in 1815 located in the Southwest corner of Public Square. The building was later destroyed by fire in 1845, not long after the railroad’s closure, a rebuilt as The Forrest City House. It was replaced in 1918 by the Hotel Cleveland building, which still stands today as part of the Terminal Tower complex.

Image Courtesy R.L. Kitterman

The typical passenger car of the 1830s was, essentially, a stagecoach mounted on railroad wheels. The illustration above shows a car from the Boston & Providence Railroad, built by John Lightner in the railroad's own shops in 1833, which is the oldest surviving original passenger car built in the United States. It initially ran behind horses, then was later pulled by steam locomotives. Today, it is on display at the National Museum of Transportation in St. Louis, Missouri. This is the sort of car that was likely used by passengers on the Cleveland & Newburgh Railway. Such vehicles would’ve been built locally by builders already used to constructing stagecoaches. The Cleveland & Newburgh owned two such coaches, which were designed with short journeys and maximum passenger capacity in mind. The seats inside the body of the cars ran lengthwise, and there were also seats on the roof, to allow a greater number of passengers to board. At each end of the line, the horses would be unhitched from one end of the cars, and led around to the other end and reattached. This saved money and time over a steam engine, which would have needed complex switches or a turntable to reverse direction. 

A charter for the line was issued March 3rd 1834 by the Ohio State Legislature construct a line "from some point in lot No. 413 in Newburgh township, to the harbor in Cleveland; freight and passengers by the power and force of steam, animals, or other mechanical force, or by a combination of them." . The initial founders were Aaron Barker, David H. Beardsley, Truman P. Handy, John W. Allen, Horace Perry, Lyman Kendall, and James S. Clark. $50000 dollars in stock were initially issued to fund construction of the line, overseen by Chief Engineer Ahaz Merchant. Ahaz was at the time the county surveyor, and well suited to the task. According to George F. Marshall “Ahaz Merchant was one of the public spirited men of those days that not only projected improvements, but his enterprise brought them to practical test.”. Ahaz left the operation of the newly constructed line to his son, Silas. 

Horsecar tracks run in the street, in this view of Loretta Pier nee Dunham's house along Euclid Avenue, ca 1874. (ClevelandMemory.org)

In 1840, the Cleveland & Newburgh RR. was forced to declare bankruptcy, and received a further $49,866 subsidy from the Cuyahoga County commissioners that allowed operations to continue until 1842. Although the line seems to have validated the idea of public transport in Cleveland, it nevertheless lost money. This may have been caused simply by a lack of traffic or a drop in the profitability of sandstone as a building material. According to the Cleveland Daily Herald, by 1844 the line had fallen into ruin, having never been able to pay off it’s creditors.

An East Cleveland Railway Horsecar speeds past a buggy on Euclid Ave in front of the home of Mr. H.C. Ford, ca 1874. (ClevelandMemory.org)

The Cleveland & Newburgh Railway may have brought Rufus Dunham some business, as it provided travelers a reliable way to travel along Euclid Ave to Public Square. Ultimately however the idea of public transport was more influential than the actual technology of the line, which was too far ahead of it’s time. Eventually, the role served by the Cleveland & Newburgh was taken over by horse drawn omnibuses. Horse drawn railways however had not been forgotten, nor was their heyday behind them. From the 1860s onward, as cities grew in the United States, new solutions to public transport were required. Enter the horsecar: the horse drawn streetcar that predated later electric trolleys and cable cars. Cleveland was no exception to this trend. By 1874, horsecars of the East Cleveland Railway would have trundled past Dunham Tavern on the Euclid streetcar line, heading for the depot and stables that were between Euclid and Chester Ave at East 55th St., next to the former Pennsylvania Railroad line that still crosses Euclid Ave on a bridge. In the 1880s, the East Cleveland Railway swapped horses for the newly invented electric streetcars, and the same basic route continued in service until it’s abandonment April 26, 1952. 

East Cleveland RR. Lakeview Station & Barn, ca 1870s. This site is near the intersection of Coltman Rd. & Euclid today.

The Cleveland & Newburgh’s story holds a gem of wisdom for our own daily lives. As George F. Marshal put it, when speaking of Ahaz Merchant, “it was his head and hands that brought this Newburgh road to completion, and if it was not financially a success it became no excuse (not) to call Mr. Merchant a visionary man.”. Too often our present society encourages us to measure our endeavors in the dollars and cents they bring us. Yet it is this very attitude that holds us back from pursuing opportunities, because they are not profitable or because we fear failing. Cleveland & Newburgh’s tumultuous tale shows us that even our failures have some value, and that just because an idea did not go to plan does not mean it was not worth pursuing in the first place. Moreover, it shows us that ultimately our legacy is defined not by how much money we have made but by what we have done with our lives. There were certainly richer and more successful men in Cleveland history than Ahaz Merchant… but none of them built Cleveland’s first railroad! 

Sources:

Web:

https://case.edu/ech/articles/c/cleveland-newburgh-railway

https://case.edu/ech/articles/d/doans-corner

https://case.edu/ech/articles/e/east-cleveland-railway-co

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=ddb0ee6134d64de4adaaa3660308abfd

http://www.clevelandmemory.org/ebooks/kennedy/c12.html#p295

Print:

Christiansen, Harry. New Northern Ohio's Interurbans, 1983.

Christiansen, Harry. Trolley Trails through Greater Cleveland and Northern Ohio, 1975.

Post, Charles Asa. Doan’s Corner And The City Four Miles West, Ch 15: The Quarry Railroad, The Caxton Co., Cleveland , Ohio (1930).

Kennedy, Jame Harrison, A History of the City of Cleveland, The Imperial Press, Cleveland, Ohio, 1896. Ch XI: 153.

Annals of the Early Settlers Association of Cuyahoga County, The Williams Publishing Co., Cleveland Ohio, 1892, Vol III : 639.

Annals of the Early Settlers Association of Cuyahoga County, Mount & Carroll, Cleveland, Ohio, 1880, Vol I : 100-101.

Atlas of Cuyahoga County, Simons, Titus, & Simons, Cleveland, Ohio, 1874.

Cleveland Daily Herald, “Correspondence of the Herald, Dunham’s Tavern, February 6, 1844”

17 February 1844, Saturday Evening Ed,

Merchant Family Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society

Merchant, Ahaz. Map of Cleveland & It’s Environs, N. Currier, NY, 1835.