How did people travel in the 18th century?

The most common mode, and the cheapest, was walking. People would travel by foot for extraordinary distances to get supplies or visit friends and family. The lower classes rarely, if ever, travelled for pleasure. Another popular means of travel, especially in the southern colonies, was by horseback.



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At the beginning of the century, U.S. citizens and immigrants to the country traveled primarily by horseback or on the rivers. After a while, crude roads were built and then canals. Before long the railroads crisscrossed the country moving people and goods with greater efficiency.

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Trains served as the most important mode of transportation during a period of time called “The Golden Age” of railroads, which lasted from the 1880s until the 1920s. An American railway circa 1884-1885.

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By 1857, which is still within one lifetime from someone born around 1800, travel by rail (the fastest way to get around at the time — remember that the Wright brothers were not even born yet and air travel was far off in the future) had gotten significantly faster.

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Before the invention of trains and automobiles, animal power was the main form of travel. Horses, donkeys, and oxen pulled wagons, coaches, and buggies. The carriage era lasted only a little more than 300 years, from the late seventeenth century until the early twentieth century.

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People travelled by foot only and they carried their goods on animals like horses, donkeys etc. Some travellers also used livestock like horses to travel long distances.

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Water transportation improved, and by the 1820s the river steamboat, canal barge, and flatboat carried people and merchandise in relative comfort and ease. Soon people built canals to enable movement from east to west.

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While a car was becoming a common household posession, the most popular modes of transportation for the longest time remained trains and ocean liners.

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