Trains and Trolleys: Railroads and Streetcars in St. Louis

While St. Louis sits virtually in the middle of the United States, its residents in the 1840s were thinking of reaching the eastern and western edges of the country in the most powerful and efficient way of the time—by rail. Over a decade before the beginning of the Civil War, the race to create the country’s first transcontinental railroad had begun.
In 1849, the Pacific Railroad was chartered in the state of Missouri with the goal of building and operating a railroad from St. Louis to the...