After this trial
trip the Clermont was used as a regular passenger boat between New York
and Albany.
The steamboat was Fulton's great gift to the world and his last work of
public interest. He died in 1815.
But the Clermont was only the beginning of steam-driven craft on the
rivers and lakes of our country. Four years afterward (1811), the first
steamboat west of the Alleghany Mountains began its route from Pittsburg
down the Ohio, and a few years later similar craft were in use on the
Great Lakes.
THE NATIONAL ROAD AND THE ERIE CANAL
But while steamboats made the rivers and lakes easy routes for travel and
traffic, something was needed to make journeys by land less difficult. To
meet this need, new highways had to be supplied, and this great work of
building public roads was taken up by the United States Government. Many
roads were built, but the most important was the one known as the National
Road.
[Illustration: _From the painting by C.Y. Turner in the DeWitt Clinton
High School, New York._
The Opening of the Erie Canal in 1825.]
It ran from Cumberland, on the Potomac, through Maryland and Pennsylvania
to Wheeling, West Virginia, on the Ohio River.
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