File:King's handbook of Springfield, Massachusetts - a series of monographs, historical and descriptive (1884) (14597996220).jpg

Identifier: kingshandbookofs00king (find matches)
Title: King's handbook of Springfield, Massachusetts : a series of monographs, historical and descriptive
Year: 1884 (1880s)
Authors: King, Moses, 1853-1909 Clogston, William
Subjects: Springfield (Mass.) -- Description and travel Springfield (Mass.) -- Bibliography
Publisher: Springfield, Mass. : J.D. Gill, Publisher
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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nd Albany at the close of the coaching-period. The freighting-business of those days, by heavy wagons, was immense; and it has left a relicin Gunns Block, at the corner of State and Walnut Streets, which was builtin 1836 to accommodate a large West-India-goods business with towns eastas far as Charlton. These goods came around from Boston by water, andwere then distributed by teaming. The movement of freight betweenSpringfield and Boston, when the Western Railroad was first discussed, wasfound to be 12,000 tons, moved by horse-power at a cost of $17.50 or $18 aton; and it was calculated that the way-freight between Boston and Albany,by railroad, might reach 84,000 tons a year. The present rare of way-freightbetween the same points, by rail, is from $2.80 per ton upward. The railroads reached Springfield, or started from there, in speedy suc-cession, from 1839 to 1S45, largely by Springfield capital, and under thecontrol of men like Justice Willard, George Bliss, Chester W. Chapin. and
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80 KINGS HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD. their associates. Springfield had received a considerable impetus to itsgrowth from the development of manufacturing at Chicopee, from 1830 to1840, increasing from 6,784 to 10,985 inhabitants. Now it received a newimpetus from the railroads; and although Chicopee was set off in 1848, thecensus of 1850 gave Springfield 11,766, and Chicopee 8,291 inhabitants.The railroads have been of a certain value in the development of the city;but it had a substantial start before they came, owing to its natural advan-tage of situation upon the Connecticut, as a north-and-south line at the pointmost favorable for the intersection of a great east-and-west line. It was atown of 10,000 inhabitants before it was entered by the locomotive; becauseit was the natural commercial centre of a rich valley, and commanded themost practicable route over the mountains to Albany and the Great West. The railroad-routes converging at Springfield were built amid great dis-couragements

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