The invisible railroad in Adams County (part 2)

[image error]The charter for a railroad in Adams County, Pennsylvania, was approved on February 18, 1836. The surveying of a route over the mountains and south into Maryland began. Gettysburg lawyer Thaddeus Steven’s less-than-transparent methods earned him lots of critics who were quick to point out that the Gettysburg Extension of the Pennsylvania Main Line did more to make contractors rich, create unnecessary jobs, and buy votes than it did to create a viable rail line.

The final route selected was very serpentine (it took 35 miles to travel 18 miles between Stevens’ Maria Furnace near Fairfield and the Main Line). Stevens’ critics dubbed the convoluted railroad, The Tapeworm. It apparently needed to be done this way to get over the mountain without the use of an inclined plane. Using the surveyed route, trains should have been able to pull 90 tons of freight up the mountain at 10 miles per hour without the use of an inclined plane.

Stevens was criticized that the twisting route was laid out to benefit his iron furnace. Hoch points out that Stevens owned three iron furnaces at different times. Two were in the Caledonia area, and one was near Fairfield. The Tapeworm route ran through the Maria Furnace property near Fairfield. However, that furnace ceased operation in 1837.

Bradley Hoch, author of Thaddeus Stevens in Gettysburg: The Making of an Abolitionist, says that Stevens would have benefitted from the railroad, but it would have been in the same way that any business near the track would have. Transportation costs would have been lowered for those businesses, and they would have become more competitive with other businesses that were located near transportation lines.

The end of the Tapeworm

In 1838, Democrats took control of the state legislature in a bitterly contested election that saw armed Democrats marching on the state house. Stevens found himself in the minority party and lost much of his support for the railroad.

“Laborers and masons picked up their tools and walked away from the Steven’s only partially built line, leaving embankments, cuts and fills, and bridges unfinished,” according to ExplorePAHistory.com.

Stevens, as a Canal Commissioner, had also authorized the government to spend much more than budgeted for the project. The 63-mile line had been estimated to cost $750,000 to survey and grade and $400,000 to lay track.

“Pennsylvania spent $750,000 on the initial miles of grading and never laid an inch of track,” Hoch said.

The final cost was $766,127 with very little to show for the expenditure.

When the property was offered for sale in 1842, no buyers came forward. It wasn’t until 1853 that the Western Maryland Railroad took over the property, and they didn’t do anything with it until 1885 when a line using much of the Tapeworm route was built to Ortanna and then Highfield, Maryland.

“I searched, but I could not find any evidence that any money changed hands when the Western Maryland Railroad took over the property,” Hoch said. “It looks like they may have been given it.”

Stevens eventually overcame the stain the Tapeworm had on his reputation. He was elected to Congress in 1849 where he began to earn a national reputation. However, even as a congressman, he was a consistent supporter of railroads.

The Underground Railroad and the Tapeworm

Although the Tapeworm Railroad was never built, Hoch said there is evidence that the graded route “may have acted as a trail or guide for the Underground Railroad.”

He was given a tour years ago of some of the houses that would have been near the Tapeworm had it been built. Inside these homes, he was shown hidden rooms where slaves traveling on the Underground Railroad could have hidden.

Today, there are still remnants of the railroad that can be seen in Adams County. Perhaps the best known is the McPherson Ridge railway cut, which was the location of some of the first day’s fighting during the Battle of Gettysburg. Other artifacts that remain are a single-arch bridge over Toms Creek near Iron Springs, a viaduct at Virginia Mills, a cut near Marsh Creek, a railbed near Willoughby Run, and the Seminary Ridge railway cut.

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