may 24, 1830 - The first section of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad opened

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Following the success of the Erie Canal, a group of merchants, bankers, and industrialists in Maryland experimented with the railroad, a new technology that was brought from England. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was the earliest major attempt to utilize the railroad to connect the Midwest to the East Coast.

This railroad later inspired the railroad boom of the 1850s. The industries that were directly related to the railroads (coal, iron, machine tools, etc.) enjoyed a period of extreme growth.

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