History
The Little Miami was incorporated on March 11, 1836, and its first president, who served without pay, was Jeremiah Morrow, governor of Ohio. It was the second railroad incorporated in the state of Ohio. The first meeting to sell stock was held at Linton's Hotel, Waynesville, May 13, 1836; the second on June 2, 1836 in Xenia. The railroad was originally intended to run from Cincinnati to Springfield where it was expected meet the Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad, which was building south to Springfield from Sandusky on Lake Erie. At the time of incorporation, the National Road had not yet reached Columbus, and other than trails, the main shipping route for the Great Lakes region to the rest of the nation to the east of the Allegheny Mountains suitable for trade was via the rivers leading to the Great Lakes and from there, on to points east along the Erie Canal. Winter rendered passage over the Alleghenies impracticable for large shipments, and the Erie Canal froze. The only alternative winter shipping route to points east was a lengthy circuitous southern route by riverboat down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans for transhipment east, but the entire regions adjacent to the Great Lakes lacked a means of communication with the Ohio River for shipment of their products - Ohio had a rather extensive network of canals under construction by this time, but they too froze in winter like the Erie Canal. The Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad was projected to run from Sandusky on Lake Erie south to a proposed interchange at Springfield, where trains could be handed over to the Little Miami to proceed to Cincinnati -- thus providing the Great Lakes region and its products with year-round access to the rest of the nation, as access to any of the ships then sailing on the Great Lakes meant access to the proposed railroad link to the Ohio River. As such, the proposal of the two railroads working in close cooperation was projected to be one of the major trade routes of the era, and of particular importance during winter months.
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“Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)