History
This region saw significant industrialization, with the first pig iron to be smelted at Mount Savage, Maryland to the northwest by the Maryland and New York Coal and Iron Company. Coal mining began in Eckhart Mines after "The Big Vein" was opened in 1820. The coal was originally transported by flatboats placed together on the headwaters of the North Branch Potomac River. As part of its operations, the company built the Potomac Wharf Branch rail line from Wills Creek, west of Cumberland, between 1846 and 1850, as an extension to its Eckhart Branch Railroad.
The Cumberland Coal & Iron Company, chartered in 1850, purchased the Maryland Mining Company's mines and railroad in April 1852, including the village of Eckhart.
With the arrival of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) in Cumberland, Maryland in 1842, local interests began lobbying for the construction of branch lines leading to the coal mines at Eckhart Mines, and the iron furnaces at Mount Savage, Maryland. The B&O didn't want to invest into branches for political as well as financial reasons. Eventually the Maryland & New York Coal & Iron Co. chartered and built its own Cumberland and Pennsylvania Railroad with the purpose of connecting with, and hopefully later selling out to, the B&O near the Cumberland Narrows.
The line to the Mt. Savage works was finished and operating in December 1844, while Maryland Mining's Eckhart branch entered service in May 1846. Throughout the following years, the Mt. Savage operation fell on hard times, and the Eckhart coal business has always been the more prosperous of the two. The C&P later became the initial stretch of B&O's main line to Connellsville, Pennsylvania, first via trackage rights and following 1903 by way of lease. Eckhart Jct. was established just west of the Narrows, Mt. Savage Jct. a few miles to the north.
Read more about this topic: Maryland Mining Company
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