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Railroads By State: History, Maps & Firsts

Last revised: September 4, 2026

Every U.S. state has a railroad story, and none of them is the same story. Massachusetts can claim the first working commercial railroad. Maryland chartered the first common carrier. Pennsylvania ran the first steam locomotive on American rails. South Carolina put the first scheduled steam passenger train in revenue service. Illinois became the place East meets West. Wyoming still moves Powder River coal. Hawaii’s common carriers are gone. Alaska’s state railroad is still a lifeline.

This page is the directory. The national arc—inventors, Civil War, the transcontinental, streamliners, Penn Central, Staggers, today’s Class I map—lives on the railroad history hub. What follows here is how the fifty states differ, a table of firsts, and a link to every state history guide already on American-Rails.com.

Rio Grande GP9 5901 and a pair of F units layover at North Yard Denver Colorado circa 1970 Robert L Eastwood Jr

Rio Grande GP9 #5901, and a pair of F-units, layover at North Yard in Denver, Colorado, circa 1970. Robert L. Eastwood, Jr. photo. American-Rails.com collection.

On this page: At a glance · Who was first · Why states differ · Mileage · The East · West of Chicago · All 50 states · Related reading

At a glance

Item	Detail
What this hub is	A state-by-state directory of railroad history pages. Not a second national encyclopedia
National story	Railroad history hub
Peak U.S. route-mileage	254,037 in 1916 (ICC / Stover atlas tradition)
Freight network today	About 140,000 route-miles (AAR, 2025 fact sheet: “nearly 140,000 miles”)
Class I railroads (U.S.)	Six: BNSF, CN, CPKC, CSX, Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific. About 615 Class II/III short lines
All six Class Is meet	Chicago / Illinois. Roughly one in four U.S. carloads or intermodal units touches the Chicago area
How to read a state page	First railroad, fallen flags, peak vs today’s mileage, who hauls freight now, Amtrak if any, tourist rides and museums as pointers—not ticket offices

Mileage definitions vary (route-miles vs. miles of track; Class I vs. all freight). Treat AAR state fact sheets as living documents. Information compiled September 4, 2026.

Who was first depends on the question

American railroad “firsts” are a pile of different dates. They are not in conflict if you keep the nouns straight. The national timeline on the history hub uses the same list.

Claim	When	Where
First North American railroad charter	1815	Col. John Stevens, New Jersey Railroad Company. Not built as chartered; later tangled in the Pennsylvania Railroad family story. Stevens also ran a steam demonstration on a circular track at Hoboken in 1826
First working commercial railroad	1826	Massachusetts. Gridley Bryant’s Granite Railway, Quincy quarry to a Neponset River dock at Milton. Horses, not steam
First common-carrier charter	February 28, 1827	Maryland. Baltimore & Ohio, built to keep Baltimore in the race after New York’s Erie Canal
First steam locomotive to run in the United States	August 8, 1829	Pennsylvania. Horatio Allen tested the English 0-4-0 Stourbridge Lion on Delaware & Hudson track at Honesdale. Too heavy for regular service
First scheduled steam passenger service	December 25, 1830	South Carolina. South Carolina Canal & Rail Road, 0-4-0 Best Friend of Charleston
Longest railroad in the world (briefly)	1833	Same company: Charleston–Hamburg, about 136 miles
First U.S. transcontinental	May 10, 1869	Utah. Union Pacific and Central Pacific met at Promontory Summit—not Promontory Point. Full story: transcontinental railroad

Canals had the political leverage in the 1820s. New York had just spent a fortune on the Erie Canal (Buffalo to the Hudson). The Delaware & Hudson Canal (1820s–1890s) moved anthracite toward New York water; its gravity railroad and the Stourbridge Lion test are the railroad footnote, not the canal’s whole life. Baltimore could not dig a canal west over the mountains, so it chartered a railroad. Once steam worked in all weather, canals lost the argument. John Stover’s Routledge Historical Atlas of the American Railroads is the atlas this site has used for the national numbers; the January 2007 Trains package “Great Railroading: State-By-State” is still a useful magazine overview of all fifty, including Alaska and Hawaii.

Delaware Lackawanna and Western F3A 656 grey dip along the Delaware River near Delaware Water Gap Pennsylvania 1950s

Delaware, Lackawanna & Western F3A #656, in a grey-dip scheme without maroon pinstripes, along the Delaware River near Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania, 1950s. American-Rails.com collection.

Why one state is not another

Traffic follows geology and ports. That is the whole comparative method:

Illinois is the railroad capital because eastern trunks, western transcontinentals, and the granger roads all had to meet somewhere. They met at Chicago.
West Virginia and Wyoming are coal states of two different eras: Appalachian hoppers on steep, tunneled mains; Powder River unit trains on the plains.
Texas is petroleum, chemicals, and Gulf ports as much as it is cotton and cattle.
Minnesota and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula are iron ore to the lakes.
California and Washington are Pacific gateways plus agriculture.
Alaska is a state-owned railroad from Seward through Anchorage to Fairbanks because the highway map still is not enough.
Hawaii was plantation railroads and two serious common carriers. The April 1, 1946 tsunami wrecked the Hawaii Consolidated Railway on the Big Island (abandoned that year). Oahu Railway & Land, worn out by wartime traffic and then hit on the North Shore, ran its last main-line trip on December 31, 1947. Trucks and the wartime road net did as much as the wave. What remains is heritage (Hawaiian Railway Society) and Honolulu rail transit, not freight.

A state page that only lists Class I names is incomplete. The interesting map is usually the short lines, the abandoned coal branches, the logging trams, and the one tourist railroad that still interprets the grade.

From 254,037 miles to about 140,000

By the early twentieth century almost every town of any size had a railroad, or wanted one. Weston, West Virginia, and Deadwood, South Dakota, both got rails. Peak U.S. route-mileage is the 1916 ICC figure of 254,037. Highways, regulation, and then abandonments cut that nearly in half. The Association of American Railroads now describes a freight network of nearly 140,000 miles, with six Class I companies holding about two-thirds of the miles and most of the revenue, and roughly 615 short lines doing the rest.

The pruning was not evenly distributed. The Midwest’s granger branches (C&NW, Milwaukee Road, Rock Island) and the Northeast’s duplicate mains came up first. Western long-haul coal and intermodal, and Southern chemical and merchandise density, held together better. That is why a 1970s map of Pennsylvania looks like a disaster and a 1970s map of Nebraska still looks like a railroad.

Milwaukee Road Little Joes lead an eastbound freight past Primrose Substation Montana circa 1972

A pair of Milwaukee Road Little Joes lead an eastbound freight past the Primrose Substation, Montana, circa 1972. American-Rails.com collection.

The East: first, steep, and short-haul

Eastern railroads started the industry: B&O, Pennsylvania, New York Central, the New England roads, later the Southern, Atlantic Coast Line, Chesapeake & Ohio, Norfolk & Western. The topography is the other half of the identity. The Appalachians and the Berkshires forced tunnels, stone viaducts, and grades that never stopped being expensive.

Mid-nineteenth-century stonework still carries trains: Thomas Viaduct in Maryland, Rockville Bridge and Starrucca Viaduct in Pennsylvania. The Cincinnati, New Orleans & Texas Pacific between Cincinnati and Chattanooga—Southern’s “Rathole Division”—was famous for 27 tunnels and 105 bridges. The B&O’s Parkersburg line in West Virginia, 103.4 miles Grafton–Parkersburg on the company’s January 1, 1948 Official List, packed 22 tunnels into what became part of a St. Louis main. Those are eastern operating facts, not scenery.

The commercial problem was different. Cities sit close together. New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore are a few hours apart. Short-haul freight pays poorly; less-than-carload traffic vanished after World War II; too many companies split the same region. Pennsylvania and New York Central merged as Penn Central on February 1, 1968, and failed on June 21, 1970, taking much of the Northeast with them. Conrail started April 1, 1976, earned a profit in 1981, and was split between CSX and Norfolk Southern in 1999. Southern roads—Southern Railway, Atlantic Coast Line, Seaboard, N&W, L&N—never went through that collapse. They were profitable when the merger wave reached them. The full crisis narrative is on the history hub; the state pages are where the abandoned branches actually sit.

Union Pacific 4-6-6-4 3964 and 4-8-8-4 Big Boy 4004 westbound out of Cheyenne Wyoming morning of September 6 1956 JE Shaw

Union Pacific 4-6-6-4 #3964 and 4-8-8-4 Big Boy #4004 lead a westbound past the tower and out of Cheyenne, Wyoming, the morning of September 6, 1956. J.E. Shaw photo. American-Rails.com collection.

Missouri-Kansas-Texas (“Katy”) GP7 #95 at the engine terminal in Parsons, Kansas, circa 1970. American-Rails.com collection.

West of Chicago: long haul, fewer names

West of the Mississippi the distances pay. Rails were in parts of Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Missouri by the 1850s. After Promontory in 1869 the rest of the West filled in: Great Northern, Northern Pacific, Santa Fe, later the Milwaukee Road’s Pacific Extension, Southern Pacific already on the coast. Streamliners that sold the region—City of Los Angeles, California Zephyr, Olympian Hiawatha, Super Chief—were a passenger overlay on freight that was already long-haul.

The 1960s–70s bankruptcies that wrecked the East were rarer here because a carload of something could still travel a thousand miles on one railroad. That did not save the Rock Island or the Milwaukee Road, and it did not save every granger branch in Iowa. It did mean the surviving western systems went into the mega-merger years as going concerns.

Burlington Northern was assembled from Great Northern, Northern Pacific, CB&Q, and SP&S in 1970 and merged with Santa Fe in 1995 as BNSF. Union Pacific absorbed Missouri Pacific, Western Pacific, Missouri-Kansas-Texas, Chicago & North Western, and Southern Pacific. Canadian National and CPKC (Canadian Pacific plus Kansas City Southern) are Class I companies on U.S. rails as well. Powder River coal and Pacific-coast intermodal are why BNSF and UP are the two largest U.S. freight railroads. The state pages are where those systems actually sit on the ground.

Rio Grande GP30 3025 leads a westbound freight upgrade at Plainview Colorado 1960s

A trio of Rio Grande GP30s, led by #3025, with a westbound freight grinding upgrade at Plainview, Colorado, 1960s. American-Rails.com collection.

Union Pacific DDA40X Centennial 6905 and an SD40-2 westbound west of Cheyenne Wyoming summer 1984 Mike Bledsoe

Union Pacific DDA40X “Centennial” #6905 and an SD40-2 lead trailers westbound, west of Cheyenne, Wyoming, summer 1984. Mike Bledsoe photo. American-Rails.com collection.

Soo Line SD40-2 #771 and SD40 #740 at Stevens Point, Wisconsin, April 23, 1974. American-Rails.com collection.

Rock Island E8A #652 at Joliet, Illinois, with the eastbound Quad Cities Rocket, circa 1971. American-Rails.com collection.

All 50 states

Every link below is a live American-Rails state history page. Kansas is /knrs.html, Vermont is /vrmt.html, California is /clfa.html, Hawaii is /hawaiian-railroads.html—those slugs are old and preserved. Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio, and West Virginia are the 2026 rewrites. The District of Columbia has no separate state leaf; it is covered from the Maryland, Virginia, and passenger/terminal pages.

State	Region	Guide
Alabama	South	al.html
Alaska	Noncontiguous	ak.html
Arizona	Southwest	az.html
Arkansas	South	ar.html
California	Pacific	clfa.html
Colorado	Mountain	co.html
Connecticut	New England	ct.html
Delaware	Mid-Atlantic	de.html
Florida	South	fl.html
Georgia	South	ga.html
Hawaii	Noncontiguous	hawaiian-railroads.html
Idaho	Mountain	id.html
Illinois	Midwest	il.html
Indiana	Midwest	in.html
Iowa	Midwest	ia.html (2026 rewrite)
Kansas	Plains	knrs.html
Kentucky	South	ky.html
Louisiana	South	la.html
Maine	New England	me.html
Maryland	Mid-Atlantic	md.html
Massachusetts	New England	ma.html
Michigan	Midwest	mi.html
Minnesota	Midwest	mn.html (2026 rewrite)
Mississippi	South	ms.html
Missouri	Midwest	mo.html
Montana	Mountain	mt.html
Nebraska	Plains	ne.html
Nevada	Mountain	nv.html
New Hampshire	New England	nh.html
New Jersey	Mid-Atlantic	nj.html
New Mexico	Southwest	nm.html
New York	Mid-Atlantic	ny.html
North Carolina	South	nc.html
North Dakota	Plains	nd.html
Ohio	Midwest	oh.html (2026 rewrite)
Oklahoma	South / Plains	ok.html
Oregon	Pacific	or.html
Pennsylvania	Mid-Atlantic	pa.html
Rhode Island	New England	ri.html
South Carolina	South	sc.html
South Dakota	Plains	sd.html
Tennessee	South	tn.html
Texas	South / Southwest	tx.html
Utah	Mountain	ut.html
Vermont	New England	vrmt.html
Virginia	South	va.html
Washington	Pacific	wa.html
West Virginia	Appalachia	wv.html (2026 rewrite)
Wisconsin	Midwest	wi.html
Wyoming	Mountain / Plains	wy.html

Rio Grande GP9 #5943 at Pueblo, Colorado, early 1970s. Robert Eastwood, Jr. photo. American-Rails.com collection.

U.S. railroad history (national timeline, mileage, regulation)
Transcontinental railroad · Civil War railroads · 1900–1910
Fallen flags · Class I railroads · Short lines
Tourist trains · Museums · Logging railroads · Narrow gauge
Amtrak · Commuter rail

State firsts and the 1916 peak follow John F. Stover, The Routledge Historical Atlas of the American Railroads (1999), and the research already on this site’s history hub. Modern network size and Class I count: Association of American Railroads fact sheet (updated September 2025). Photographs are from the American-Rails.com collection except as credited.

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