Date
11-13-2024
Department
College of Arts and Sciences
Degree
Master of Arts in History - Thesis (MA)
Chair
Margaret Crosby
Keywords
railroads, transportation, shipping, Pennsylvania, natural monopolies
Disciplines
History
Recommended Citation
Keenan, Shane A., "Two Roads to Cornwall: The Cornwall, the Cornwall & Lebanon, and Gilded Age Rail Competition" (2024). Masters Theses. 1232.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/masters/1232
Abstract
Historians have devoted much attention to the overbuilding and excessive competition among railroads in the 1880s. However, they have mostly focused on larger railroads like the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad (Reading). Smaller railroads like the Cornwall Railroad and the Cornwall & Lebanon Railroad are less well known but play an important part in that larger story. Both railroads ran between Lebanon, Pennsylvania and Cornwall, Pennsylvania. Their primary purpose was to ship iron ore from the mines in Cornwall. Few outside of Lebanon County or Lancaster County, Pennsylvania know about these two railroads, yet they are a prime example of the excessively competitive attitude among railroad executives in the 1880s. However, they also differ from these trends in their profitability and lack of rate wars. Further, they are a forgotten chapter in the history of both the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading, both of which later took control of the smaller railroads. These railroads’ rivalries have implications regarding railroads’ status as natural monopolies and the railroad regulations and consolidation that followed in the wake of overbuilding and the Panic of 1893.
