CHAPTER IX.

                            THE RAILROAD ERA.

    Although the Wabash & Erie Canal was projected twenty years in
advance of the first railroad survey across Clay county, transportation
by water preceded that by rail but one year, the work of constructing the
Terre Haute & Richmond Railroad having been actively inaugurated at
about the same time that the first canal boat passed through the Cross-
Cut and up the Side-Cut to the Feeder Dam, thence up Eel river to Bel-
laire and Bowling Green, which was in 1850.
    This railroad, surveyed and profiled in 1849, as its original title
indicated, was projected from the western to the eastern border of the
state, to connect and bring into closer relationship, socially and commer-
cially, with each other and with the capital of the state, the cities of
Terre Haute and Richmond, which are, respectively, the metropolis of the
opposite extremes of the state, east and west.
    Two preliminary surveys were made for this line of road, one lying
across the north end of Clay and the other across the south end of Parke
county, the choice of route having been for some time suspended in
doubt. (See Reminiscence entitled “What Might Have Been.”)
    Construction trains, carrying freight and passengers, were crossing
the county in the latter part of the summer and fall of 1851. Work
progressed from both ends—Terre Haute and Indianapolis. Oliver Crom-
well, who was elected to the legislature in 1851, was heard to say that on
going to the capital to attend the annual session, which (under the old
constitution) convened the first Monday in December, he rode on con-
struction trains over both ends of the road, making the connection between
by stage. The track was completed and through connection made early in
the year 1852. The first passenger train went over the road in April. On
Monday, the 10th day of May following, the first round trip was made
between Terre Haute and Indianapolis by daylight.
    Among the Clay countians who had sub-contracts on the construc-
tion of the grade of this road were Esau Presnell, Jesse Fuller, Robert
Smith and Michael Combs. Work on the throwing of dirt began on the
west side of White river on the 10th day of May, 1851.

Vandalia Lines.
    This road, later known as the Terre Haute & Indianapolis, and as a
division of the Vandalia, crosses the county at an angle of about twenty-
five degrees, intersecting Van Buren, Brazil and Posey townships. At the
time of its location Brazil was the only town in the county on the line of
survey. True, Harmony had previously been platted, but had been

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