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The 'Indian Problem'

White Americans, particularly those who lived on the western frontier, often feared and resented the Native Americans they encountered: To them, American Indians seemed to be an unfamiliar, alien people who occupied land that white settlers wanted (and believed they deserved).

Some officials in the early years of the American republic, such as President George Washington, believed that the best way to solve this "Indian problem" was to simply "civilize" the Native Americans. The goal of this civilization campaign was to make Native Americans as much like white Americans as possible by encouraging them convert to Christianity, learn to speak and read English and adopt European-style economic practices such as the individual ownership of land and other property (including, in some instances in the South, enslaved persons).

In the southeastern United States, many Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee people embraced these customs and became known as the "Five Civilized Tribes."

Did you know? Indian removal took place in the Northern states as well. In Illinois and Wisconsin, for example, the bloody Black Hawk War in 1832 opened to white settlement millions of acres of land that had belonged to the Sauk, Fox and other native nations.

But the Native Americans' land, located in parts of Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee, was valuable, and it grew to be more coveted as white settlers flooded the region. Many of these whites yearned to make their fortunes by growing cotton, and often resorted to violent means to take land from their Indigenous neighbors. They stole livestock; burned and looted houses and towns; committed mass murder; and squatted on land that did not belong to them.

Worcester v. Georgia

State governments joined in this effort to drive Native Americans out of the South. Several states passed laws limiting Native American sovereignty and rights and encroaching on their territory.

In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the U.S. Supreme Court objected to these practices and affirmed that native nations were sovereign nations "in which the laws of Georgia [and other states] can have no force."

Even so, the maltreatment continued. As President Andrew Jackson noted in 1832, if no one intended to enforce the Supreme Court's rulings (which he certainly did not), then the decisions would "[fall]...still born." Southern states were determined to take ownership of Indian lands and would go to great lengths to secure this territory.

Indian Removal Act

Andrew Jackson had long been an advocate of what he called "Indian removal." As an Army general, he had spent years leading brutal campaigns against the Creeks in Georgia and Alabama and the Seminoles in Florida-campaigns that resulted in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of acres of land from Indian nations to white farmers.

As president, he continued this crusade. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act, which gave the federal government the power to exchange Native-held land in the cotton kingdom east of the Mississippi for land to the west, in the "Indian colonization zone" that the United States had acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase. This "Indian territory" was located in present-day Oklahoma.

The law required the government to negotiate removal treaties fairly, voluntarily and peacefully: It did not permit the president or anyone else to coerce Native nations into giving up their ancestral lands. However, President Jackson and his government frequently ignored the letter of the law and forced Native Americans to vacate lands they had lived on for generations.

Trail of Tears

In the winter of 1831, under threat of invasion by the U.S. Army, the Choctaw became the first nation to be expelled from its land altogether. They made the journey to Indian Territory on foot (some "bound in chains and marched double file," one historian writes), and without any food, supplies or other help from the government.

Thousands of people died along the way. It was, one Choctaw leader told an Alabama newspaper, a "trail of tears and death."

The Indian-removal process continued. In 1836, the federal government drove the Creeks from their land for the last time: 3,500 of the 15,000 Creeks who set out for Oklahoma did not survive the trip.

Treaty of New Echota

The Cherokee people were divided: What was the best way to handle the government's determination to get its hands on their territory? Some wanted to stay and fight. Others thought it was more pragmatic to agree to leave in exchange for money and other concessions.

In 1835, a few self-appointed representatives of the Cherokee nation negotiated the Treaty of New Echota, which traded all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi - roughly 7 million acres - for $5 million, relocation assistance and compensation for lost property.

To the federal government, the treaty (signed in New Echota, Georgia) was a done deal, but a majority of the Cherokee felt betrayed. Importantly, the negotiators did not represent the tribal government or anyone else. Most Cherokee people considered the Treaty of New Echota fraudulent, and the Cherokee National Council voted in 1836 to reject it.

John Ross

"The instrument in question is not the act of our nation," wrote the nation's principal chief, John Ross, in a letter to the U.S. Senate protesting the Treaty of New Echota. "We are not parties to its covenants; it has not received the sanction of our people." Nearly 16,000 Cherokees signed Ross's petition, but Congress approved the treaty anyway.

By 1838, only about 2,000 Cherokees had left their Georgia homeland for Indian Territory. President Martin Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott and 7,000 soldiers to expedite the removal process. Scott and his troops forced the Cherokee into stockades at bayonet point while his men looted their homes and belongings.

Then, they marched the Indians more than 1,200 miles to Indian Territory. Whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, cholera and starvation were epidemic along the way. Historians estimate that more than 5,000 Cherokee died as a result of the journey.

Legacy of the Trail of Tears

By 1840, tens of thousands of Native Americans had been driven off of their land in the southeastern states and forced to move across the Mississippi to Indian Territory. The federal government promised that their new land would remain unmolested forever, but as the line of white settlement pushed westward, "Indian Country" shrank and shrank. In 1907, Oklahoma became a state and Indian Territory was considered lost.

A 2020 decision by the Supreme Court, however, highlighted ongoing interest in Native American territorial rights. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that a huge area of Oklahoma is still considered an American Indian reservation.

This decision left the state of Oklahoma unable to prosecute Native Americans accused of crimes on those tribal lands - only federal and tribal law enforcement can prosecute such crimes. (A later 2022 Supreme Court decision rolled back some provisions of the 2020 court finding.)

The Trail of Tears - actually a network of different routes - is over 5,000 miles long and covers nine states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Today, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail is run by the National Park Service and portions of it are accessible on foot, by horse, by bicycle or by car.

Sources

Trail of Tears. NPS.gov.
Trail of Tears. Museum of the Cherokee Indian.
The Treaty of New Echota and the Trail of Tears. North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
The Treaty That Forced the Cherokee People from Their Homelands Goes on View. Smithsonian Magazine.
Justices rule swath of Oklahoma remains tribal reservation. Associated Press.
Justices limit 2020 ruling on tribal lands in Oklahoma. Associated Press.

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Trail of Tears: Definition, Date & Cherokee Nation - HISTORY

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The Trail of Tears was the deadly route Native Americans were forced to follow when they were pushed off their ancestral lands and into Oklahoma by the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

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The U.S. Government used treaties as one means to displace Indians from their tribal lands, a mechanism that was strengthened with the Removal Act of 1830. In cases where this failed, the government sometimes violated both treaties and Supreme Court rulings to facilitate the spread of European Americans westward across the continent.

As the 19th century began, land-hungry Americans poured into the backcountry of the coastal South and began moving toward and into what would later become the states of Alabama and Mississippi. Since Indian tribes living there appeared to be the main obstacle to westward expansion, white settlers petitioned the federal government to remove them. Although Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe argued that the Indian tribes in the Southeast should exchange their land for lands west of the Mississippi River, they did not take steps to make this happen. Indeed, the first major transfer of land occurred only as the result of war.

In 1814, Major General Andrew Jackson led an expedition against the Creek Indians climaxing in the Battle of Horse Shoe Bend (in present day Alabama near the Georgia border), where Jackson's force soundly defeated the Creeks and destroyed their military power. He then forced upon the Indians a treaty whereby they surrendered to the United States over twenty-million acres of their traditional land-about one-half of present day Alabama and one-fifth of Georgia. Over the next decade, Jackson led the way in the Indian removal campaign, helping to negotiate nine of the eleven major treaties to remove Indians.

Under this kind of pressure, Native American tribes-specifically the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw-realized that they could not defeat the Americans in war. The appetite of the settlers for land would not abate, so the Indians adopted a strategy of appeasement. They hoped that if they gave up a good deal of their land, they could keep at least some a part of it. The Seminole tribe in Florida resisted, in the Second Seminole War (1835-1842) and the Third Seminole War (1855-1858), however, neither appeasement nor resistance worked.

From a legal standpoint, the United States Constitution empowered Congress to "regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes." In early treaties negotiated between the federal government and the Indian tribes, the latter typically acknowledged themselves "to be under the protection of the United States of America, and of no other sovereign whosoever." When Andrew Jackson became president (1829-1837), he decided to build a systematic approach to Indian removal on the basis of these legal precedents.

To achieve his purpose, Jackson encouraged Congress to adopt the Removal Act of 1830. The Act established a process whereby the President could grant land west of the Mississippi River to Indian tribes that agreed to give up their homelands. As incentives, the law allowed the Indians financial and material assistance to travel to their new locations and start new lives and guaranteed that the Indians would live on their new property under the protection of the United States Government forever. With the Act in place, Jackson and his followers were free to persuade, bribe, and threaten tribes into signing removal treaties and leaving the Southeast.

In general terms, Jackson's government succeeded. By the end of his presidency, he had signed into law almost seventy removal treaties, the result of which was to move nearly 50,000 eastern Indians to Indian Territory-defined as the region belonging to the United States west of the Mississippi River but excluding the states of Missouri and Iowa as well as the Territory of Arkansas-and open millions of acres of rich land east of the Mississippi to white settlers. Despite the vastness of the Indian Territory, the government intended that the Indians' destination would be a more confined area-what later became eastern Oklahoma.

The Cherokee Nation resisted, however, challenging in court the Georgia laws that restricted their freedoms on tribal lands. In his 1831 ruling on Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia, Chief Justice John Marshall declared that "the Indian territory is admitted to compose a part of the United States," and affirmed that the tribes were "domestic dependent nations" and "their relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to his guardian." However, the following year the Supreme Court reversed itself and ruled that Indian tribes were indeed sovereign and immune from Georgia laws. President Jackson nonetheless refused to heed the Court's decision. He obtained the signature of a Cherokee chief agreeing to relocation in the Treaty of New Echota, which Congress ratified against the protests of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay in 1835. The Cherokee signing party represented only a faction of the Cherokee, and the majority followed Principal Chief John Ross in a desperate attempt to hold onto their land. This attempt faltered in 1838, when, under the guns of federal troops and Georgia state militia, the Cherokee tribe were forced to the dry plains across the Mississippi. The best evidence indicates that between three and four thousand out of the fifteen to sixteen thousand Cherokees died en route from the brutal conditions of the "Trail of Tears."

With the exception of a small number of Seminoles still resisting removal in Florida, by the 1840s, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, no Indian tribes resided in the American South. Through a combination of coerced treaties and the contravention of treaties and judicial determination, the United States Government succeeded in paving the way for the westward expansion and the incorporation of new territories as part of the United States.

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Milestones: 1830-1860 - Office of the Historian

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41 018 climbing the Schiefe Ebene with 01 1066 as pusher locomotive (video 34.4 MB)

A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomotive's boiler to the point where it becomes gaseous and its volume increases 1,700 times. Functionally, it is a steam engine on wheels.

Steam locomotives were first developed in the United Kingdom during the early 19th century and used for railway transport until the middle of the 20th century. Richard Trevithick built the first steam locomotive known to have hauled a load over a distance at Pen-y-darren in 1804, although he produced an earlier locomotive for trial at Coalbrookdale in 1802. , built in 1812 by Matthew Murray for the Middleton Railway, was the first commercially successful steam locomotive. Locomotion No. 1, built by George Stephenson and his son Robert's company Robert Stephenson and Company, was the first steam locomotive to haul passengers on a public railway, the Stockton and Darlington Railway, in 1825. Rapid development ensued; in 1830 George Stephenson opened the first public inter-city railway, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, after the success of Rocket at the 1829 Rainhill Trials had proved that steam locomotives could perform such duties. Robert Stephenson and Company was the pre-eminent builder of steam locomotives in the first decades of steam for railways in the United Kingdom, the United States, and much of Europe.

Towards the end of the steam era, a longstanding British emphasis on speed culminated in a record, still unbroken, of 126 miles per hour (203 kilometres per hour) by LNER Class A4 4468 Mallard. In the United States, larger loading gauges allowed the development of very large, heavy locomotives such as the Union Pacific Big Boy, which weighed 540 long tons (550 t; 600 short tons) and had a tractive effort of 135,375 pounds-force (602,180 newtons).

Beginning in the early 1900s, steam locomotives were gradually superseded by electric and diesel locomotives, with railways fully converting to electric and diesel power beginning in the late 1930s. The majority of steam locomotives were retired from regular service by the 1980s, although several continue to run on tourist and heritage lines.

The earliest railways employed horses to draw carts along rail tracks. In 1784, William Murdoch, a Scottish inventor, built a small-scale prototype of a steam road locomotive in Birmingham. A full-scale rail steam locomotive was proposed by William Reynolds around 1787. An early working model of a steam rail locomotive was designed and constructed by steamboat pioneer John Fitch in the US during 1794. His steam locomotive used interior bladed wheels guided by rails or tracks. The model still exists at the Ohio Historical Society Museum in Columbus, US. The authenticity and date of this locomotive is disputed by some experts and a workable steam train would have to await the invention of the high-pressure steam engine by Richard Trevithick, who pioneered the use of steam locomotives.

The first full-scale working railway steam locomotive was the 3 ft (914 mm) gauge Coalbrookdale Locomotive, built by Trevithick in 1802. It was constructed for the Coalbrookdale ironworks in Shropshire in the United Kingdom though no record of it working there has survived. On 21 February 1804, the first recorded steam-hauled railway journey took place as another of Trevithick's locomotives hauled a train along the 4 ft 4 in (1,321 mm)-wide tramway from the Pen-y-darren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil, to Abercynon in South Wales. Accompanied by Andrew Vivian, it ran with mixed success. The design incorporated a number of important innovations that included using high-pressure steam which reduced the weight of the engine and increased its efficiency.

Trevithick visited the Newcastle area in 1804 and had a ready audience of colliery (coal mine) owners and engineers. The visit was so successful that the colliery railways in north-east England became the leading centre for experimentation and development of the steam locomotive. Trevithick continued his own steam propulsion experiments through another trio of locomotives, concluding with the Catch Me Who Can in 1808, first in the world to haul fare-paying passengers.

In 1812, Matthew Murray's successful twin-cylinder rack locomotive first ran on the edge-railed rack-and-pinion Middleton Railway. Another well-known early locomotive was Puffing Billy, built 1813-14 by engineer William Hedley. It was intended to work on the Wylam Colliery near Newcastle upon Tyne. This locomotive is the oldest preserved, and is on static display at the Science Museum, London.

George Stephenson, a former miner working as an engine-wright at Killingworth Colliery, developed up to sixteen Killingworth locomotives, including in 1814, another in 1815, and a (newly identified) Killingworth Billy in 1816. He also constructed The Duke in 1817 for the Kilmarnock and Troon Railway, which was the first steam locomotive to work in Scotland.

In 1825, Stephenson built Locomotion No. 1 for the Stockton and Darlington Railway, north-east England, which was the first public steam railway in the world. In 1829, his son Robert built in Newcastle , which was entered in and won the Rainhill Trials. This success led to the company emerging as the pre-eminent builder of steam locomotives used on railways in the UK, US and much of Europe. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened a year later making exclusive use of steam power for passenger and goods trains.

The Stourbridge Lion

Before the arrival of British imports, some domestic steam locomotive prototypes were built and tested in the United States. An early miniature prototype was built by John Fitch, who demonstrated his miniature engine to George Washington during the 1780s. A prominent large example was Col. John Steven's "steam wagon" which was demonstrated on a loop of track in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1825.

Many of the earliest locomotives for commercial use on American railroads were imported from Great Britain, including first the Stourbridge Lion and later the . However, a domestic locomotive-manufacturing industry was soon established. In 1830, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's , designed by Peter Cooper, was the first commercial US-built locomotive to run in America; it was intended as a demonstration of the potential of steam traction rather than as a revenue-earning locomotive. The DeWitt Clinton, built in 1831 for the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, was a notable early locomotive.

As of 2021, the original John Bull was on static display in the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. The replica is preserved at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.

The first railway service outside the United Kingdom and North America was opened in 1829 in France between Saint-Etienne and Lyon; it was initially limited to animal traction and converted to steam traction early 1831, using Seguin locomotives. The first steam locomotive in service in Europe outside of France was named The Elephant, which on 5 May 1835 hauled a train on the first line in Belgium, linking Mechelen and Brussels.

Photo of the Adler made in the early 1850s

In Germany, the first working steam locomotive was a rack-and-pinion engine, similar to the Salamanca, designed by the British locomotive pioneer John Blenkinsop. Built in June 1816 by Johann Friedrich Krigar in the Royal Berlin Iron Foundry ( Königliche Eisengießerei zu Berlin), the locomotive ran on a circular track in the factory yard. It was the first locomotive to be built on the European mainland and the first steam-powered passenger service; curious onlookers could ride in the attached coaches for a fee. It is portrayed on a New Year's badge for the Royal Foundry dated 1816. Another locomotive was built using the same system in 1817. They were to be used on pit railways in Königshütte and in Luisenthal on the Saar (today part of Völklingen), but neither could be returned to working order after being dismantled, moved and reassembled. On 7 December 1835, the ran for the first time between Nuremberg and Fürth on the Bavarian Ludwig Railway. It was the 118th engine from the locomotive works of Robert Stephenson and stood under patent protection.

In 1838, the third steam locomotive to be built in Germany, the , was manufactured by the Maschinenbaufirma Übigau near Dresden, built by Prof. Johann Andreas Schubert. The first independently designed locomotive in Germany was the , built by August Borsig in 1841. The first locomotive produced by Henschel-Werke in Kassel, the Drache, was delivered in 1848.

The first steam locomotives operating in Italy were the Bayard and the Vesuvio, running on the Napoli-Portici line, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

The first railway line over Swiss territory was the Strasbourg- Basle line opened in 1844. Three years later, in 1847, the first fully Swiss railway line, the Spanisch Brötli Bahn, from Zürich to Baden was opened.

The arid nature of south Australia posed distinctive challenges to their early steam locomotion network. The high concentration of magnesium chloride in the well water ( bore water) used in locomotive boilers on the Trans-Australian Railway caused serious and expensive maintenance problems. At no point along its route does the line cross a permanent freshwater watercourse, so bore water had to be relied on. No inexpensive treatment for the highly mineralised water was available, and locomotive boilers were lasting less than a quarter of the time normally expected. In the days of steam locomotion, about half the total train load was water for the engine. The line's operator, Commonwealth Railways, was an early adopter of the diesel-electric locomotive.

The fire-tube boiler was standard practice for steam locomotive. Although other types of boiler were evaluated they were not widely used, except for some 1,000 locomotives in Hungary which used the water-tube Brotan boiler.

A boiler consists of a firebox where the fuel is burned, a barrel where water is turned into steam, and a smokebox which is kept at a slightly lower pressure than outside the firebox.

Solid fuel, such as wood, coal or coke, is thrown into the firebox through a door by a fireman, onto a set of grates which hold the fuel in a bed as it burns. Ash falls through the grate into an ashpan. If oil is used as the fuel, a door is needed for adjusting the air flow, maintaining the firebox, and cleaning the oil jets.

The fire-tube boiler has internal tubes connecting the firebox to the smokebox through which the combustion gases flow transferring heat to the water. All the tubes together provide a large contact area, called the tube heating surface, between the gas and water in the boiler. Boiler water surrounds the firebox to stop the metal from becoming too hot. This is another area where the gas transfers heat to the water and is called the firebox heating surface. Ash and char collect in the smokebox as the gas gets drawn up the chimney ( stack or smokestack in the US) by the exhaust steam from the cylinders.

Aftermath of a boiler explosion on a railway locomotive, c.1850

The exhaust steam from the engine cylinders shoots out of a nozzle pointing up the chimney in the smokebox. The steam entrains or drags the smokebox gases with it which maintains a lower pressure in the smokebox than that under the firebox grate. This pressure difference causes air to flow up through the coal bed and keeps the fire burning.

The steam generated in the boiler not only moves the locomotive, but is also used to operate other devices such as the whistle, the air compressor for the brakes, the pump for replenishing the water in the boiler and the passenger car heating system. The constant demand for steam requires a periodic replacement of water in the boiler. The water is kept in a tank in the locomotive tender or wrapped around the boiler in the case of a tank locomotive. Periodic stops are required to refill the tanks; an alternative was a scoop installed under the tender that collected water as the train passed over a track pan located between the rails.

While the locomotive is producing steam, the amount of water in the boiler is constantly monitored by looking at the water level in a transparent tube, or sight glass. Efficient and safe operation of the boiler requires keeping the level in between lines marked on the sight glass. If the water level is too high, steam production falls, efficiency is lost and water is carried out with the steam into the cylinders, possibly causing mechanical damage. More seriously, if the water level gets too low, the crown sheet (top sheet) of the firebox becomes exposed. Without water on top of the sheet to transfer away the heat of combustion, it softens and fails, letting high-pressure steam into the firebox and the cab. The development of the fusible plug, a temperature-sensitive device, ensured a controlled venting of steam into the firebox to warn the fireman to add water.

Scale builds up in the boiler and prevents adequate heat transfer, and corrosion eventually degrades the boiler materials to the point where it needs to be rebuilt or replaced. Start-up on a large engine may take hours of preliminary heating of the boiler water before sufficient steam is available.

Although the boiler is typically placed horizontally, for locomotives designed to work in locations with steep slopes it may be more appropriate to consider a vertical boiler or one mounted such that the boiler remains horizontal but the wheels are inclined to suit the slope of the rails.

The steam generated in the boiler fills the space above the water in the partially filled boiler. Its maximum working pressure is limited by spring-loaded safety valves. It is then collected either in a perforated tube fitted above the water level or by a dome that often houses the regulator valve, or throttle, the purpose of which is to control the amount of steam leaving the boiler. The steam then either travels directly along and down a steam pipe to the engine unit or may first pass into the wet header of a superheater, the role of the latter being to improve thermal efficiency and eliminate water droplets suspended in the "saturated steam", the state in which it leaves the boiler. On leaving the superheater, the steam exits the dry header of the superheater and passes down a steam pipe, entering the steam chests adjacent to the cylinders of a reciprocating engine. Inside each steam chest is a sliding valve that distributes the steam via ports that connect the steam chest to the ends of the cylinder space. The role of the valves is twofold: admission of each fresh dose of steam, and exhaust of the used steam once it has done its work.

Each piston transmits power through a crosshead, connecting rod ( Main rod in the US) and a crankpin on the driving wheel ( Main driver in the US) or to a crank on a driving axle. The movement of the valves in the steam chest is controlled through a set of rods and linkages called the valve gear, actuated from the driving axle or from the crankpin; the valve gear includes devices that allow reversing the engine, adjusting valve travel and the timing of the admission and exhaust events. The cut-off point determines the moment when the valve blocks a steam port, "cutting off" admission steam and thus determining the proportion of the stroke during which steam is admitted into the cylinder; for example a 50% cut-off admits steam for half the stroke of the piston. The remainder of the stroke is driven by the expansive force of the steam. Careful use of cut-off provides economical use of steam and in turn, reduces fuel and water consumption. The reversing lever (Johnson bar in the US), or screw-reverser (if so equipped), that controls the cut-off, therefore, performs a similar function to a gearshift in an automobile - maximum cut-off, providing maximum tractive effort at the expense of efficiency, is used to pull away from a standing start, whilst a cut-off as low as 10% is used when cruising, providing reduced tractive effort, and therefore lower fuel/water consumption.

Exhaust steam is directed upwards out of the locomotive through the chimney, by way of a nozzle called a blastpipe, creating the familiar "chuffing" sound of the steam locomotive. The blastpipe is placed at a strategic point inside the smokebox that is at the same time traversed by the combustion gases drawn through the boiler and grate by the action of the steam blast. The combining of the two streams, steam and exhaust gases, is crucial to the efficiency of any steam locomotive, and the internal profiles of the chimney (or, strictly speaking, the ejector) require careful design and adjustment. This has been the object of intensive studies by a number of engineers (and often ignored by others, sometimes with catastrophic consequences). The fact that the draught depends on the exhaust pressure means that power delivery and power generation are automatically self-adjusting. Among other things, a balance has to be struck between obtaining sufficient draught for combustion whilst giving the exhaust gases and particles sufficient time to be consumed. In the past, a strong draught could lift the fire off the grate, or cause the ejection of unburnt particles of fuel, dirt and pollution for which steam locomotives had an unenviable reputation. Moreover, the pumping action of the exhaust has the counter-effect of exerting back pressure on the side of the piston receiving steam, thus slightly reducing cylinder power. Designing the exhaust ejector became a specific science, with engineers such as Chapelon, Giesl and Porta making large improvements in thermal efficiency and a significant reduction in maintenance time and pollution. A similar system was used by some early gasoline/kerosene tractor manufacturers ( Advance-Rumely/ Hart-Parr) - the exhaust gas volume was vented through a cooling tower, allowing the steam exhaust to draw more air past the radiator.

Steam locomotive 2-8-2 at train station

Running gear includes the brake gear, wheel sets, axleboxes, springing and the motion that includes connecting rods and valve gear. The transmission of the power from the pistons to the rails and the behaviour of the locomotive as a vehicle, being able to negotiate curves, points and irregularities in the track, is of paramount importance. Because reciprocating power has to be directly applied to the rail from 0 rpm upwards, this creates the problem of adhesion of the driving wheels to the smooth rail surface. Adhesive weight is the portion of the locomotive's weight bearing on the driving wheels. This is made more effective if a pair of driving wheels is able to make the most of its axle load, i.e. its individual share of the adhesive weight. Equalising beams connecting the ends of leaf springs have often been deemed a complication in Britain, however, locomotives fitted with the beams have usually been less prone to loss of traction due to wheel-slip. Suspension using equalizing levers between driving axles, and between driving axles and trucks, was standard practice on North American locomotives to maintain even wheel loads when operating on uneven track.

Locomotives with total adhesion, where all of the wheels are coupled together, generally lack stability at speed. To counter this, locomotives often fit unpowered carrying wheels mounted on two-wheeled trucks or four-wheeled bogies centred by springs/inverted rockers/geared rollers that help to guide the locomotive through curves. These usually take on weight - of the cylinders at the front or the firebox at the rear - when the width exceeds that of the mainframes. Locomotives with multiple coupled-wheels on a rigid chassis would have unacceptable flange forces on tight curves giving excessive flange and rail wear, track spreading and wheel climb derailments. One solution was to remove or thin the flanges on an axle. More common was to give axles end-play and use lateral motion control with spring or inclined-plane gravity devices.

Railroads generally preferred locomotives with fewer axles, to reduce maintenance costs. The number of axles required was dictated by the maximum axle loading of the railroad in question. A builder would typically add axles until the maximum weight on any one axle was acceptable to the railroad's maximum axle loading. A locomotive with a wheel arrangement of two lead axles, two drive axles, and one trailing axle was a high-speed machine. Two lead axles were necessary to have good tracking at high speeds. Two drive axles had a lower reciprocating mass than three, four, five or six coupled axles. They were thus able to turn at very high speeds due to the lower reciprocating mass. A trailing axle was able to support a huge firebox, hence most locomotives with the wheel arrangement of (American Type Atlantic) were called free steamers and were able to maintain steam pressure regardless of throttle setting.

The chassis, or locomotive frame, is the principal structure onto which the boiler is mounted and which incorporates the various elements of the running gear. The boiler is rigidly mounted on a "saddle" beneath the smokebox and in front of the boiler barrel, but the firebox at the rear is allowed to slide forward and backwards, to allow for expansion when hot.

Generally, the largest locomotives are permanently coupled to a tender that carries the water and fuel. Often, locomotives working shorter distances do not have a tender and carry the fuel in a bunker, with the water carried in tanks placed next to the boiler. The tanks can be in various configurations, including two tanks alongside ( side tanks or pannier tanks), one on top ( saddle tank) or one between the frames ( well tank).

The fuel used depended on what was economically available to the railway. In the UK and other parts of Europe, plentiful supplies of coal made this the obvious choice from the earliest days of the steam engine. Until 1870, the majority of locomotives in the United States burned wood, but as the Eastern forests were cleared, coal gradually became more widely used until it became the dominant fuel worldwide in steam locomotives. Railways serving sugar cane farming operations burned bagasse, a byproduct of sugar refining. In the US, the ready availability and low price of oil made it a popular steam locomotive fuel after 1900 for the southwestern railroads, particularly the Southern Pacific. In the Australian state of Victoria, many steam locomotives were converted to heavy oil firing after World War II. German, Russian, Australian and British railways experimented with using coal dust to fire locomotives.

During World War 2, a number of Swiss steam shunting locomotives were modified to use electrically heated boilers, consuming around 480 kW of power collected from an overhead line with a pantograph. These locomotives were significantly less efficient than electric ones; they were used because Switzerland was suffering a coal shortage because of the War, but had access to plentiful hydroelectricity.

A number of tourist lines and heritage locomotives in Switzerland, Argentina and Australia have used light diesel-type oil.

Water was supplied at stopping places and locomotive depots from a dedicated water tower connected to water cranes or gantries. In the UK, the US and France, water troughs ( track pans in the US) were provided on some main lines to allow locomotives to replenish their water supply without stopping, from rainwater or snowmelt that filled the trough due to inclement weather. This was achieved by using a deployable "water scoop" fitted under the tender or the rear water tank in the case of a large tank engine; the fireman remotely lowered the scoop into the trough, the speed of the engine forced the water up into the tank, and the scoop was raised again once it was full.

Water is essential for the operation of a steam locomotive. As Swengel argued:

It has the highest specific heat of any common substance; that is, more thermal energy is stored by heating water to a given temperature than would be stored by heating an equal mass of steel or copper to the same temperature. In addition, the property of vapourising (forming steam) stores additional energy without increasing the temperature... water is a very satisfactory medium for converting thermal energy of fuel into mechanical energy.

Swengel went on to note that "at low temperature and relatively low boiler outputs", good water and regular boiler washout was an acceptable practice, even though such maintenance was high. As steam pressures increased, however, a problem of "foaming" or "priming" developed in the boiler, wherein dissolved solids in the water formed "tough-skinned bubbles" inside the boiler, which in turn were carried into the steam pipes and could blow off the cylinder heads. To overcome the problem, hot mineral-concentrated water was deliberately wasted (blown down) from the boiler periodically. Higher steam pressures required more blowing-down of water out of the boiler. Oxygen generated by boiling water attacks the boiler, and with increased steam pressure the rate of rust (iron oxide) generated inside the boiler increases. One way to help overcome the problem was water treatment. Swengel suggested that these problems contributed to the interest in electrification of railways.

In the 1970s, L.D. Porta developed a sophisticated system of heavy-duty chemical water treatment ( Porta Treatment) that not only keeps the inside of the boiler clean and prevents corrosion, but modifies the foam in such a way as to form a compact "blanket" on the water surface that filters the steam as it is produced, keeping it pure and preventing carry-over into the cylinders of water and suspended abrasive matter.

All locomotives are fitted with a variety of appliances. Some of these relate directly to the operation of the steam engine; others are for signalling, train control or other purposes. In the United States, the Federal Railroad Administration mandated the use of certain appliances over the years in response to safety concerns. The most typical appliances are as follows:

Vertical glass tubes, known as water gauges or water glasses, show the level of water in the boiler and are carefully monitored at all times while the boiler is being fired. Before the 1870s it was more common to have a series of try-cocks fitted to the boiler within reach of the crew; each try cock (at least two and usually three were fitted) was mounted at a different level. By opening each try-cock and seeing if steam or water vented through it, the level of water in the boiler could be estimated with limited accuracy. As boiler pressures increased the use of try-cocks became increasingly dangerous and the valves were prone to blockage with scale or sediment, giving false readings. This led to their replacement with the sight glass. As with the injectors, two glasses with separate fittings were usually installed to provide independent readings.

The term for pipe and boiler insulation is "lagging" which derives from the cooper's term for a wooden barrel stave. Two of the earliest steam locomotives used wooden lagging to insulate their boilers: the Salamanca, the first commercially successful steam locomotive, built in 1812, and the Locomotion No. 1, the first steam locomotive to carry passengers on a public rail line. Large amounts of heat are wasted if a boiler is not insulated. Early locomotives used lags, shaped wooden staves, fitted lengthways along the boiler barrel, and held in place by hoops, metal bands, the terms and methods are from cooperage.

Improved insulating methods included applying a thick paste containing a porous mineral such as kieselgur, or attaching shaped blocks of insulating compound such as magnesia blocks. In the latter days of steam, "mattresses" of stitched asbestos cloth stuffed with asbestos fibre were fixed to the boiler, on separators so as not quite to touch the boiler. However, asbestos is currently banned in most countries for health reasons. The most common modern-day material is glass wool, or wrappings of aluminium foil.

The lagging is protected by a close-fitted sheet-metal casing known as boiler clothing or cleading.

Effective lagging is particularly important for fireless locomotives; however, in recent times under the influence of L.D. Porta, "exaggerated" insulation has been practised for all types of locomotive on all surfaces liable to dissipate heat, such as cylinder ends and facings between the cylinders and the mainframes. This considerably reduces engine warmup time with a marked increase in overall efficiency.

Early locomotives were fitted with a valve controlled by a weight suspended from the end of a lever, with the steam outlet being stopped by a cone-shaped valve. As there was nothing to prevent the weighted lever from bouncing when the locomotive ran over irregularities in the track, thus wasting steam, the weight was later replaced by a more stable spring-loaded column, often supplied by Salter, a well-known spring scale manufacturer. The danger of these devices was that the driving crew could be tempted to add weight to the arm to increase pressure. Most early boilers were fitted with a tamper-proof "lockup" direct-loaded ball valve protected by a cowl. In the late 1850s, John Ramsbottom introduced a safety valve that became popular in Britain during the latter part of the 19th century. Not only was this valve tamper-proof, but tampering by the driver could only have the effect of easing pressure. George Richardson's safety valve was an American invention introduced in 1875, and was designed to release the steam only at the moment when the pressure attained the maximum permitted. This type of valve is in almost universal use at present. Britain's Great Western Railway was a notable exception to this rule, retaining the direct-loaded type until the end of its separate existence, because it was considered that such a valve lost less pressure between opening and closing.

The earliest locomotives did not show the pressure of steam in the boiler, but it was possible to estimate this by the position of the safety valve arm which often extended onto the firebox back plate; gradations marked on the spring column gave a rough indication of the actual pressure. The promoters of the Rainhill trials urged that each contender have a proper mechanism for reading the boiler pressure, and Stephenson devised a nine-foot vertical tube of mercury with a sight-glass at the top, mounted alongside the chimney, for his Rocket. The Bourdon tube gauge, in which the pressure straightens an oval-section coiled tube of brass or bronze connected to a pointer, was introduced in 1849 and quickly gained acceptance, and is still used today. Some locomotives have an additional pressure gauge in the steam chest. This helps the driver avoid wheel-slip at startup, by warning if the regulator opening is too great.

Spark arrestor and self-cleaning smokebox

Wood-burners emit large quantities of flying sparks which necessitate an efficient spark-arresting device generally housed in the smokestack. Many different types were fitted, the most common early type being the Bonnet stack that incorporated a cone-shaped deflector placed before the mouth of the chimney pipe, and a wire screen covering the wide stack exit. A more efficient design was the Radley and Hunter centrifugal stack patented in 1850 (commonly known as the diamond stack), incorporating baffles so oriented as to induce a swirl effect in the chamber that encouraged the embers to burn out and fall to the bottom as ash. In the self-cleaning smokebox the opposite effect was achieved: by allowing the flue gasses to strike a series of deflector plates, angled in such a way that the blast was not impaired, the larger particles were broken into small pieces that would be ejected with the blast, rather than settle in the bottom of the smokebox to be removed by hand at the end of the run. As with the arrestor, a screen was incorporated to retain any large embers.

Locomotives of the British Railways standard classes fitted with self-cleaning smokeboxes were identified by a small cast oval plate marked "S.C.", fitted at the bottom of the smokebox door. These engines required different disposal procedures and the plate highlighted this need to depot staff.

A factor that limits locomotive performance is the rate at which fuel is fed into the fire. In the early 20th century some locomotives became so large that the fireman could not shovel coal fast enough. In the United States, various steam-powered mechanical stokers became standard equipment and were adopted and used elsewhere including Australia and South Africa.

Introducing cold water into a boiler reduces power, and from the 1920s a variety of heaters were incorporated. The most common type for locomotives was the exhaust steam feedwater heater that piped some of the exhaust through small tanks mounted on top of the boiler or smokebox or into the tender tank; the warm water then had to be delivered to the boiler by a small auxiliary steam pump. The rare economiser type differed in that it extracted residual heat from the exhaust gases. An example of this is the pre-heater drum(s) found on the Franco-Crosti boiler.

Steam locomotives consume vast quantities of water because they operate on an open cycle, expelling their steam immediately after a single use rather than recycling it in a closed loop as stationary and marine steam engines do. Water was a constant logistical problem, and condensing engines were devised for use in desert areas. These engines had huge radiators in their tenders and instead of exhausting steam out of the funnel it was captured, passed back to the tender and condensed. The cylinder lubricating oil was removed from the exhausted steam to avoid a phenomenon known as priming, a condition caused by foaming in the boiler which would allow water to be carried into the cylinders causing damage because of its incompressibility. The most notable engines employing condensers (Class 25, the "puffers which never puff") worked across the Karoo desert of South Africa from the 1950s until the 1980s.

Some British and American locomotives were equipped with scoops which collected water from "water troughs" (track pans in the US) while in motion, thus avoiding stops for water. In the US, small communities often did not have refilling facilities. During the early days of railroading, the crew simply stopped next to a stream and filled the tender using leather buckets. This was known as "jerking water" and led to the term "jerkwater towns" (meaning a small town, a term which today is considered derisive). In Australia and South Africa, locomotives in drier regions operated with large oversized tenders and some even had an additional water wagon, sometimes called a "canteen" or in Australia (particularly in New South Wales) a "water gin".

Steam locomotives usually have their own braking system, independent from the rest of the train. Locomotive brakes employ large shoes which press against the driving wheel treads. They can be either air brakes or steam brakes. In addition, they nearly always have a handbrake to keep the locomotive stationary when there is no steam pressure to power the other braking systems.

Because of the limited braking force provided by locomotive-only brakes, many steam locomotives were fitted with a train brake. These came in two main varieties; air brakes and vacuum brakes. These allowed the driver to control the brakes on all cars in the train.

The primary competitor to the air brake was the vacuum brake, in which a steam-operated ejector is mounted on the engine instead of the air pump, to create the vacuum required to power the brake system. A secondary ejector or crosshead vacuum pump is used to maintain the vacuum in the system against the small leaks in the pipe connections between carriages and wagons. Vacuum brakes were the predominant form of train braking in the United Kingdom and countries that adopted its practices, such as India and South Africa, during the steam era.

The pistons and valves on the earliest locomotives were lubricated by the enginemen dropping a lump of tallow down the blast pipe. More sophisticated methods of delivering the substance were soon developed. Tallow adheres well to cylinder walls and is more effective than mineral oil in resisting the action of water. It remains a constituent of modern steam cylinder oil formulation.

As speeds and distances increased, mechanisms were developed that injected thick mineral oil into the steam supply. The first, a displacement lubricator, mounted in the cab, uses a controlled stream of steam condensing into a sealed container of oil. Water from the condensed steam displaces the oil into pipes. The apparatus is usually fitted with sight-glasses to confirm the rate of supply. A later method uses a mechanical pump worked from one of the crossheads. In both cases, the supply of oil is proportional to the speed of the locomotive.

Big-end bearing (with connecting rod and coupling rod) of a Blackmoor Vale showing pierced cork stoppers to oil reservoirs

Lubricating the frame components (axle bearings, horn blocks and bogie pivots) depends on capillary action: trimmings of worsted yarn are trailed from oil reservoirs into pipes leading to the respective component. The rate of oil supplied is controlled by the size of the bundle of yarn and not the speed of the locomotive, so it is necessary to remove the trimmings (which are mounted on wire) when stationary. However, at regular stops (such as a terminating station platform), oil finding its way onto the track can still be a problem.

Crankpin and crosshead bearings carry small cup-shaped reservoirs for oil. These have feed pipes to the bearing surface that start above the normal fill level, or are kept closed by a loose-fitting pin, so that only when the locomotive is in motion does oil enter. In United Kingdom practice, the cups are closed with simple corks, but these have a piece of porous cane pushed through them to admit air. It is customary for a small capsule of pungent oil (aniseed or garlic) to be incorporated in the bearing metal to warn if the lubrication fails and excess heating or wear occurs.

Blowbacks were fairly common. In a 1955 report on an accident near Dunstable, the Inspector wrote, "In 1953 twenty-three cases, which were not caused by an engine defect, were reported and they resulted in 26 enginemen receiving injuries. In 1954, the number of occurrences and of injuries were the same and there was also one fatal casualty." They remain a problem, as evidenced by the 2012 incident with BR Standard Class 7 70013 Oliver Cromwell.

In British and European (except former Soviet Union countries) practice, locomotives usually have buffers at each end to absorb compressive loads ("buffets"). The tensional load of drawing the train (draft force) is carried by the coupling system. Together these control slack between the locomotive and train, absorb minor impacts and provide a bearing point for pushing movements.

In Canadian and American practice, all of the forces between the locomotive and cars are handled through the coupler - particularly the Janney coupler, long standard on American railroad rolling stock - and its associated draft gear, which allows some limited slack movement. Small dimples called "poling pockets" at the front and rear corners of the locomotive allowed cars to be pushed onto an adjacent track using a pole braced between the locomotive and the cars. In Britain and Europe, North American style "buckeye" and other couplers that handle forces between items of rolling stock have become increasingly popular.

A pilot was usually fixed to the front end of locomotives, although in European and a few other railway systems including New South Wales, they were considered unnecessary. Plough-shaped, sometimes called "cow catchers", they were quite large and were designed to remove obstacles from the track such as cattle, bison, other animals or tree limbs. Though unable to "catch" stray cattle, these distinctive items remained on locomotives until the end of steam. Switching engines usually replaced the pilot with small steps, known as footboards. Many systems used the pilot and other design features to produce a distinctive appearance.

Preserved Great Western Railway locomotive 7802 Bradley Manor, with two oil lamps signifying an express passenger service, and a high-intensity electric lamp added for safety standards

When night operations began, railway companies in some countries equipped their locomotives with lights to allow the driver to see what lay ahead of the train, or to enable others to see the locomotive. Headlights were originally oil or acetylene lamps, but when electric arc lamps became available in the late 1880s, they quickly replaced the older types.

Britain did not adopt bright headlights as they would affect night vision and so could mask the low-intensity oil lamps used in the semaphore signals and at each end of trains, increasing the danger of missing signals, especially on busy tracks. Locomotive stopping distances were also normally much greater than the range of headlights, and the railways were well-signalled and fully fenced to prevent livestock and people from straying onto them, largely negating the need for bright lamps. Thus low-intensity oil lamps continued to be used, positioned on the front of locomotives to indicate the class of each train. Four "lamp irons" (brackets on which to place the lamps) were provided: one below the chimney and three evenly spaced across the top of the buffer beam. The exception to this was the Southern Railway and its constituents, who added an extra lamp iron each side of the smokebox, and the arrangement of lamps (or in daylight, white circular plates) told railway staff the origin and destination of the train. On all vehicles, equivalent lamp irons were also provided on the rear of the locomotive or tender for when the locomotive was running tender- or bunker-first.

In some countries, heritage steam operation continues on the national network. Some railway authorities have mandated powerful headlights on at all times, including during daylight. This was to further inform the public or track workers of any active trains.

Locomotives used bells and steam whistles from earliest days of steam locomotion. In the United States, India and Canada, bells warned of a train in motion. In Britain, where all lines are by law fenced throughout, bells were only a requirement on railways running on a road (i.e. not fenced off), for example a tramway along the side of the road or in a dockyard. Consequently, only a minority of locomotives in the UK carried bells. Whistles are used to signal personnel and give warnings. Depending on the terrain the locomotive was being used in, the whistle could be designed for long-distance warning of impending arrival, or for more localised use.

Early bells and whistles were sounded through pull-string cords and levers. Automatic bell ringers came into widespread use in the US after 1910.

From the early 20th century operating companies in such countries as Germany and Britain began to fit locomotives with Automatic Warning System (AWS) in-cab signalling, which automatically applied the brakes when a signal was passed at "caution". In Britain, these became mandatory in 1956. In the United States, the Pennsylvania Railroad also fitted their locomotives with such devices.

The booster engine was an auxiliary steam engine which provided extra tractive effort for starting. It was a low-speed device, usually mounted on the trailing truck. It was disengaged via an idler gear at a low speed, e.g. 30 km/h. Boosters were widely used in the US and tried experimentally in Britain and France. On the narrow-gauged New Zealand railway system, six Kb 4-8-4 locomotives were fitted with boosters, the only 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge engines in the world to have such equipment.

Booster engines were also fitted to tender trucks in the US and known as auxiliary locomotives. Two and even three truck axles were connected together using side rods which limited them to slow-speed service.

The firedoor is used to cover the firehole when coal is not being added. It serves two purposes, first, it prevents air being drawn over the top of the fire, rather forcing it to be drawn through it. The second purpose is to safeguard the train crew against blowbacks. It does, however, have a means to allow some air to pass over the top of the fire (referred to as "secondary air") to complete the combustion of gases produced by the fire.

Firedoors come in multiple designs, the most basic of which is a single piece which is hinged on one side and can swing open onto the footplate. This design has two issues. First, it takes up much room on the footplate, and second, the draught will tend to pull it completely shut, thus cutting off any secondary air. To compensate for this some locomotives are fitted with a latch that prevents the firedoor from closing completely whereas others have a small vent on the door that may be opened to allow secondary air to flow through. Though it was considered to design a firedoor that opens inwards into the firebox thus preventing the inconvenience caused on the footplate, such a door would be exposed to the full heat of the fire and would likely deform, thus becoming useless.

A more popular type of firedoor consists of a two-piece sliding door operated by a single lever. There are tracks above and below the firedoor which the door runs along. These tracks are prone to becoming jammed by debris and the doors required more effort to open than the aforementioned swinging door. In order to address this some firedoors use powered operation which utilized a steam or air cylinder to open the door. Among these are the butterfly doors which pivot at the upper corner, the pivoting action offers low resistance to the cylinder that opens the door.

Numerous variations on the basic locomotive occurred as railways attempted to improve efficiency and performance.

Early steam locomotives had two cylinders, one either side, and this practice persisted as the simplest arrangement. The cylinders could be mounted between the mainframes (known as "inside" cylinders), or mounted outside the frames and driving wheels ("outside" cylinders). Inside cylinders drive cranks built into the driving axle; outside cylinders drive cranks on extensions to the driving axles.

Later designs employed three or four cylinders, mounted both inside and outside the frames, for a more even power cycle and greater power output. This was at the expense of more complicated valve gear and increased maintenance requirements. In some cases the third cylinder was added inside simply to allow for smaller diameter outside cylinders, and hence reduce the width of the locomotive for use on lines with a restricted loading gauge, for example the SR K1 and U1 classes.

Most British express-passenger locomotives built between 1930 and 1950 were or types with three or four cylinders (e.g. GWR 6000 Class, LMS Coronation Class, SR Merchant Navy Class, LNER Gresley Class A3). From 1951, all but one of the 999 new British Rail standard class steam locomotives across all types used 2-cylinder configurations for easier maintenance.

Early locomotives used a simple valve gear that gave full power in either forward or reverse. Soon the Stephenson valve gear allowed the driver to control cut-off; this was largely superseded by Walschaerts valve gear and similar patterns. Early locomotive designs using slide valves and outside admission were relatively easy to construct, but inefficient and prone to wear. Eventually, slide valves were superseded by inside admission piston valves, though there were attempts to apply poppet valves (commonly used in stationary engines) in the 20th century. Stephenson valve gear was generally placed within the frame and was difficult to access for maintenance; later patterns applied outside the frame were more readily visible and maintained.

U-127, the 4-6-0 oil burning De Glehn compound locomotive that pulled Lenin's funeral train, in the Museum of the Moscow Railway at Paveletsky Rail Terminal

A South Australian Railways 400 class Garratt locomotive, built in 1952 to a Beyer, Peacock & Company design by Société Franco-Belge. Articulation is enabled by pivots at the ends of the locomotive's central frame.

David Lloyd George Leaves Tan-y-Bwlch Station, Gwynedd - a Fairlie locomotive on the Festiniog Railway, Wales

Very powerful locomotives tend to be longer than those with lower power output, but long rigid-framed designs are impracticable for the tight curves frequently found on narrow-gauge railways. Various designs for articulated locomotives were developed to overcome this problem. The Mallet and the Garratt were the two most popular. They had a single boiler and two engine units (sets of cylinders and driving wheels): both of the Garratt's engine units were on swivelling frames, whereas one of the Mallet's was on a swivelling frame and the other was fixed under the boiler unit. A few triplex locomotives were also designed, with a third engine unit under the tender. Other less common variations included the Fairlie locomotive, which had two boilers back-to-back on a common frame, with two separate engine units.

Duplex locomotives, containing two engines in one rigid frame, were also tried, but were not notably successful. For example, the Pennsylvania Railroad class T1, designed for very fast running, suffered recurring and ultimately unfixable slippage problems throughout their careers.

In the United States on the Southern Pacific Railroad, a series of cab forward locomotives were produced with the cab and the firebox at the front of the locomotive and the tender behind the smokebox, so that the engine appeared to run backwards. This was only possible by using oil-firing. Southern Pacific selected this design to provide air free of smoke for the engine driver to breathe as the locomotive passed through mountain tunnels and snow sheds. Another variation was the Camelback locomotive, with the cab situated halfway along the boiler. In England, Oliver Bulleid developed the SR Leader class locomotive during the nationalisation process in the late 1940s. The locomotive was heavily tested but several design faults (such as coal firing and sleeve valves) meant that this locomotive and the other part-built locomotives were scrapped. The cab-forward design was taken by Bulleid to Ireland, where he moved after nationalisation, where he developed the "turfburner". This locomotive was more successful, but was scrapped due to the dieselisation of the Irish railways.

The only preserved cab forward locomotive is Southern Pacific 4294 in Sacramento, California.

In France, the three Heilmann locomotives were built with a cab forward design.

Ljungström steam turbine locomotive with air preheater, c. 1925

Steam turbines were created as an attempt to improve the operation and efficiency of steam locomotives. Experiments with steam turbines using direct-drive and electrical transmissions in various countries proved mostly unsuccessful. The London, Midland & Scottish Railway built the Turbomotive, a largely successful attempt to prove the efficiency of steam turbines. Had it not been for the outbreak of World War II, more may have been built. The Turbomotive ran from 1935 to 1949, when it was rebuilt into a conventional locomotive because many parts required replacement, an uneconomical proposition for a "one-off" locomotive. In the United States, Union Pacific, Chesapeake & Ohio and Norfolk & Western (N&W) railways all built turbine-electric locomotives. The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) also built turbine locomotives, but with a direct-drive gearbox. However, all designs failed due to dust, vibration, design flaws or inefficiency at lower speeds. The final one remaining in service was the N&W's, retired in January 1958. The only truly successful design was the TGOJ MT3, used for hauling iron ore from Grängesberg in Sweden to the ports of Oxelösund. Despite functioning correctly, only three were built. Two of them are preserved in working order in museums in Sweden.

In a fireless locomotive the boiler is replaced by a steam accumulator, which is charged with steam (actually water at a temperature well above boiling point, (100 °C (212 °F)) from a stationary boiler. Fireless locomotives were used where there was a high fire risk (e.g. oil refineries), where cleanliness was important (e.g. food-production plants) or where steam is readily available (e.g. paper mills and power stations where steam is either a by-product or is cheaply available). The water vessel ("boiler") is heavily insulated, the same as with a fired locomotive. Until all the water has boiled away, the steam pressure does not drop except as the temperature drops.

Another class of fireless locomotive is a compressed-air locomotive.

Mixed power locomotives, utilising both steam and diesel propulsion, have been produced in Russia, Britain and Italy.

Under unusual conditions (lack of coal, abundant hydroelectricity) some locomotives in Switzerland were modified to use electricity to heat the boiler, making them electric-steam locomotives.

A steam-electric locomotive uses electric transmission, like diesel-electric locomotives, except that a steam engine instead of a diesel engine is used to drive a generator. Three such locomotives were built by the French engineer Jean Jacques Heilmann in the 1890s.

The Gov. Stanford, a 4-4-0 (using Whyte notation) locomotive typical of 19th-century American practice

Steam locomotives are categorised by their wheel arrangement. The two dominant systems for this are the Whyte notation and UIC classification.

The Whyte notation, used in most English-speaking and Commonwealth countries, represents each set of wheels with a number. These numbers typically represented the number of unpowered leading wheels, followed by the number of driving wheels (sometimes in several groups), followed by the number of un-powered trailing wheels. For example, a yard engine with only 4 driven wheels would be categorised as a wheel arrangement. A locomotive with a 4-wheel leading truck, followed by 6 drive wheels, and a 2-wheel trailing truck, would be classed as a . Different arrangements were given names which usually reflect the first usage of the arrangement; for instance, the "Santa Fe" type () is so called because the first examples were built for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. These names were informally given and varied according to region and even politics.

The UIC classification is used mostly in European countries apart from the United Kingdom. It designates consecutive pairs of wheels (informally "axles") with a number for non-driving wheels and a capital letter for driving wheels (A=1, B=2, etc.) So a Whyte designation would be an equivalent to a 2-C-1 UIC designation.

On many railroads, locomotives were organised into classes. These broadly represented locomotives which could be substituted for each other in service, but most commonly a class represented a single design. As a rule classes were assigned some sort of code, generally based on the wheel arrangement. Classes also commonly acquired nicknames, such as (a small shunting locomotive), representing notable (and sometimes uncomplimentary) features of the locomotives.

In the steam locomotive era, two measures of locomotive performance were generally applied. At first, locomotives were rated by tractive effort, defined as the average force developed during one revolution of the driving wheels at the railhead. This can be roughly calculated by multiplying the total piston area by 85% of the boiler pressure (a rule of thumb reflecting the slightly lower pressure in the steam chest above the cylinder) and dividing by the ratio of the driver diameter over the piston stroke. However, the precise formula is

where d is the bore of the cylinder (diameter) in inches, s is the cylinder stroke, in inches, P is boiler pressure in pounds per square inch, D is the diameter of the driving wheel in inches, and c is a factor that depends on the effective cut-off. In the US, c is usually set at 0.85, but lower on engines that have maximum cutoff limited to 50-75%.

The tractive effort is only the "average" force, as not all effort is constant during the one revolution of the drivers. At some points of the cycle, only one piston is exerting turning moment and at other points, both pistons are working. Not all boilers deliver full power at starting, and the tractive effort also decreases as the rotating speed increases.

Tractive effort is a measure of the heaviest load a locomotive can start or haul at very low speed over the ruling grade in a given territory. However, as the pressure grew to run faster goods and heavier passenger trains, tractive effort was seen to be an inadequate measure of performance because it did not take into account speed. Therefore, in the 20th century, locomotives began to be rated by power output. A variety of calculations and formulas were applied, but in general railways used dynamometer cars to measure tractive force at speed in actual road testing.

British railway companies have been reluctant to disclose figures for drawbar horsepower and have usually relied on continuous tractive effort instead.

Classification is indirectly connected to locomotive performance. Given adequate proportions of the rest of the locomotive, power output is determined by the size of the fire, and for a bituminous coal-fuelled locomotive, this is determined by the grate area. Modern non-compound locomotives are typically able to produce about 40 drawbar horsepower per square foot of grate. Tractive force, as noted earlier, is largely determined by the boiler pressure, the cylinder proportions and the size of the driving wheels. However, it is also limited by the weight on the driving wheels (termed "adhesive weight"), which needs to be at least four times the tractive effort.

The weight of the locomotive is roughly proportional to the power output; the number of axles required is determined by this weight divided by the axleload limit for the trackage where the locomotive is to be used. The number of driving wheels is derived from the adhesive weight in the same manner, leaving the remaining axles to be accounted for by the leading and trailing bogies. Passenger locomotives conventionally had two-axle leading bogies for better guidance at speed; on the other hand, the vast increase in the size of the grate and firebox in the 20th century meant that a trailing bogie was called upon to provide support. In Europe, some use was made of several variants of the Bissel bogie in which the swivelling movement of a single axle truck controls the lateral displacement of the front driving axle (and in one case the second axle too). This was mostly applied to 8-coupled express and mixed traffic locomotives, and considerably improved their ability to negotiate curves whilst restricting overall locomotive wheelbase and maximising adhesion weight.

As a rule, shunting engines (US: switching engines) omitted leading and trailing bogies, both to maximise tractive effort available and to reduce wheelbase. Speed was unimportant; making the smallest engine (and therefore smallest fuel consumption) for the tractive effort was paramount. Driving wheels were small and usually supported the firebox as well as the main section of the boiler. Banking engines (US: helper engines) tended to follow the principles of shunting engines, except that the wheelbase limitation did not apply, so banking engines tended to have more driving wheels. In the US, this process eventually resulted in the Mallet type engine with its many driven wheels, and these tended to acquire leading and then trailing bogies as guidance of the engine became more of an issue.

As locomotive types began to diverge in the late 19th century, freight engine designs at first emphasised tractive effort, whereas those for passenger engines emphasised speed. Over time, freight locomotive size increased, and the overall number of axles increased accordingly; the leading bogie was usually a single axle, but a trailing truck was added to larger locomotives to support a larger firebox that could no longer fit between or above the driving wheels. Passenger locomotives had leading bogies with two axles, fewer driving axles, and very large driving wheels in order to limit the speed at which the reciprocating parts had to move.

In the 1920s, the focus in the United States turned to horsepower, epitomised by the "super power" concept promoted by the Lima Locomotive Works, although tractive effort was still the prime consideration after World War I to the end of steam. Goods trains were designed to run faster, while passenger locomotives needed to pull heavier loads at speed. This was achieved by increasing the size of grate and firebox without changes to the rest of the locomotive, requiring the addition of a second axle to the trailing truck. Freight s became s while s became s. Similarly, passenger s became s. In the United States this led to a convergence on the dual-purpose and the articulated configuration, which was used for both freight and passenger service. Mallet locomotives went through a similar transformation, evolving from bank engines into huge mainline locomotives with much larger fireboxes; their driving wheels were also increased in size in order to allow faster running.

Esh 4444 0-10-0 at Varshavsky Rail Terminal, St. Petersburg

The most-manufactured single class of steam locomotive in the world is the Russian locomotive class E steam locomotive with around 11,000 produced both in Russia and other countries such as Czechoslovakia, Germany, Sweden, Hungary and Poland. The Russian locomotive class O numbered 9,129 locomotives, built between 1890 and 1928. Around 7,000 units were produced of the German DRB Class 52 Kriegslok.

In Britain, 863 of the GWR 5700 Class were built, and 943 of the DX class of the London and North Western Railway - including 86 engines built for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway.

Great Western Railway No. 6833 Calcot Grange, a 4-6-0 Grange class steam locomotive at Bristol Temple Meads station. Note the Belpaire (square-topped) firebox.

60163 Tornado on the East Coast Main Line in 2016

From 1948, British Railways (BR) allowed the former Big Four companies (now designated as "Regions") to continue to produce their own designs, but also created a range of standard locomotives which supposedly combined the best features from each region. Although a policy of dieselisation was adopted in 1955, BR continued to build new steam locomotives until 1960, with the final engine being named Evening Star.

Some independent manufacturers produced steam locomotives for a few more years, with the last British-built industrial steam locomotive being constructed by Hunslet in 1971. Since then, a few specialised manufacturers have continued to produce small locomotives for narrow gauge and miniature railways, but as the prime market for these is the tourist and heritage railway sector, the demand for such locomotives is limited. In November 2008, a new build main line steam locomotive, 60163 Tornado, was tested on UK mainlines for eventual charter and tour use.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, most Swedish steam locomotives were manufactured in Britain. Later, however, most steam locomotives were built by local factories including NOHAB in Trollhättan and ASJ in Falun. One of the most successful types was the class "B" (), inspired by the Prussian class P8. Many of the Swedish steam locomotives were preserved during the Cold War in case of war. During the 1990s, these steam locomotives were sold to non-profit associations or abroad, which is why the Swedish class B, class S () and class E2 () locomotives can now be seen in Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and Canada.

California Western Railroad No. 45 (builder No. 58045), built by Baldwin in 1924, is a 2-8-2 Mikado locomotive. It is still in use today on the Skunk Train.

Locomotives for American railroads were nearly always built in the United States with very few imports, except in the earliest days of steam engines. This was due to the basic differences of markets in the United States which initially had many small markets located large distances apart, in contrast to Europe's higher density of markets. Locomotives that were cheap and rugged and could go large distances over cheaply built and maintained tracks were required. Once the manufacture of engines was established on a wide scale there was very little advantage to buying an engine from overseas that would have to be customised to fit the local requirements and track conditions. Improvements in engine design of both European and US origin were incorporated by manufacturers when they could be justified in a generally very conservative and slow-changing market. With the notable exception of the USRA standard locomotives built during World War I, in the United States, steam locomotive manufacture was always semi-customised. Railroads ordered locomotives tailored to their specific requirements, though some basic design features were always present. Railroads developed some specific characteristics; for example, the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Great Northern Railway had a preference for the Belpaire firebox. In the United States, large-scale manufacturers constructed locomotives for nearly all rail companies, although nearly all major railroads had shops capable of heavy repairs and some railroads (for example, the Norfolk and Western Railway and the Pennsylvania Railroad, which had two erecting shops) constructed locomotives entirely in their own shops. Companies manufacturing locomotives in the US included Baldwin Locomotive Works, American Locomotive Company (ALCO), and Lima Locomotive Works. Altogether, between 1830 and 1950, over 160,000 steam locomotives were built in the United States, with Baldwin accounting for the largest share, nearly 70,000.

Steam locomotives required regular and, compared to a diesel-electric engine, frequent service and overhaul (often at government-regulated intervals in Europe and the US). Alterations and upgrades regularly occurred during overhauls. New appliances were added, unsatisfactory features removed, cylinders improved or replaced. Almost any part of the locomotive, including boilers, was replaced or upgraded. When service or upgrades got too expensive the locomotive was traded off or retired. On the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad two locomotives were dismantled; the boilers were placed onto two new Class T locomotives and the residual wheel machinery made into a pair of Class U switchers with new boilers. Union Pacific's fleet of 3-cylinder engines were converted into two-cylinder engines in 1942, because of high maintenance problems.

The 200th steam locomotive built by Clyde Engineering (TF 1164) from the Powerhouse Museum collection

In Sydney, Clyde Engineering and the Eveleigh Railway Workshops both built steam locomotives for the New South Wales Government Railways. These include the C38 class ; the first five were built at Clyde with streamlining, the other 25 locomotives were built at Eveleigh (13) and Cardiff Workshops (12) near Newcastle. In Queensland, steam locomotives were locally constructed by Walkers. Similarly, the South Australian Railways also manufactured steam locomotives locally at Islington Railway Workshops in Adelaide. Victorian Railways constructed most of their locomotives at its Newport Workshops and in Bendigo, while in the early days locomotives were built at the Phoenix Foundry in Ballarat. Locomotives constructed at the Newport shops ranged from the nA class built for the narrow gauge, up to the H class - the largest conventional locomotive ever to operate in Australia, weighing 260 tons. However, the title of largest locomotive ever used in Australia goes to the 263-ton New South Wales AD60 class locomotive Garratt, built by Beyer, Peacock & Company in England. Most steam locomotives used in Western Australia were built in the United Kingdom, though some examples were designed and built locally at the Western Australian Government Railways' Midland Railway Workshops. The 10 WAGR S class locomotives (introduced in 1943) were the only class of steam locomotive to be wholly conceived, designed and built in Western Australia, while the Midland workshops notably participated in the Australia-wide construction program of Australian Standard Garratts - these wartime locomotives were built at Midland in Western Australia, Clyde Engineering in New South Wales, Newport in Victoria and Islington in South Australia and saw varying degrees of service in all Australian states.

The introduction of electric locomotives around the turn of the 20th century and later diesel-electric locomotives spelled the beginning of a decline in the use of steam locomotives, although it was some time before they were phased out of general use. As diesel power (especially with electric transmission) became more reliable in the 1930s, it gained a foothold in North America. The full transition away from steam power in North America took place during the 1950s. In continental Europe, large-scale electrification had replaced steam power by the 1970s. Steam was a familiar technology, adapted well to local facilities, and also consumed a wide variety of fuels; this led to its continued use in many countries until the end of the 20th century.

Steam engines have considerably less thermal efficiency than modern diesels, requiring constant maintenance and labour to keep them operational. Water is required at many points throughout a rail network, making it a major problem in desert areas, as are found in some regions of the United States, Australia and South Africa. In places where water is available, it may be hard, which can cause " scale" to form, composed mainly of calcium carbonate, magnesium hydroxide and calcium sulfate. Calcium and magnesium carbonates tend to be deposited as off-white solids on the inside the surfaces of pipes and heat exchangers. This precipitation is principally caused by thermal decomposition of bicarbonate ions but also happens in cases where the carbonate ion is at saturation concentration. The resulting build-up of scale restricts the flow of water in pipes. In boilers, the deposits impair the flow of heat into the water, reducing the heating efficiency and allowing the metal boiler components to overheat.

The reciprocating mechanism on the driving wheels of a two-cylinder single expansion steam locomotive tended to pound the rails (see hammer blow), thus requiring more maintenance. Raising steam from coal took a matter of hours, and created serious pollution problems. Coal-burning locomotives required fire cleaning and ash removal between turns of duty. Diesel or electric locomotives, by comparison, drew benefit from new custom-built servicing facilities. The smoke from steam locomotives was also deemed objectionable; the first electric and diesel locomotives were developed in response to smoke abatement requirements, although this did not take into account the high level of less-visible pollution in diesel exhaust smoke, especially when idling. In some countries, however, power for electric locomotives is derived from steam generated in power stations, which are often run by coal.

60163 Tornado, a new express locomotive built for the British main line, completed in 2008

Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad 425 being readied in Pennsylvania, US, for the daily tourist train in 1993

Dramatic increases in the cost of diesel fuel prompted several initiatives to revive steam power. However none of these has progressed to the point of production and, as of the early 21st century, steam locomotives operate only in a few isolated regions of the world and in tourist operations.

As early as 1975, railway enthusiasts in the United Kingdom began building new steam locomotives. That year, Trevor Barber completed his 2 ft (610 mm) gauge locomotive Trixie which ran on the Meirion Mill Railway. From the 1990s onwards, the number of new builds being completed rose dramatically with new locos completed by the narrow-gauge Ffestiniog and Corris railways in Wales. The Hunslet Engine Company was revived in 2005, and began building steam locomotives on a commercial basis. A standard-gauge LNER Peppercorn Pacific "Tornado" was completed at Hopetown Works, Darlington, and made its first run on 1 August 2008. It entered main line service later in 2008. As of 2009 over half-a-dozen projects to build working replicas of extinct steam engines are going ahead, in many cases using existing parts from other types to build them. Examples include BR 72010 Hengist, BR Class 3MT No. 82045, BR Class 2MT No. 84030, Brighton Atlantic Beachy Head, the LMS 5551 The Unknown Warrior project, GWR " 47xx 4709, 2999 Lady of Legend, 1014 County of Glamorgan and 6880 Betton Grange projects. These United Kingdom based new build projects are further complemented by the new build Pennsylvania Railroad 5550 project in the United States. One of the group's goals is to surpass the steam locomotive speed record held by the 4468 Mallard when the 5550 is completed and for the 5550 to fill in a huge gap in steam locomotive preservation.

In 1980, American financier Ross Rowland established American Coal Enterprises to develop a modernised coal-fired steam locomotive. His ACE 3000 concept attracted considerable attention, but was never built.

In 1998, in his book The Red Devil and Other Tales from the Age of Steam, David Wardale put forward the concept of a high-speed high-efficiency "Super Class 5 4-6-0" locomotive for future steam haulage of tour trains on British main lines. The idea was formalised in 2001 by the formation of 5AT Project dedicated to developing and building the 5AT Advanced Technology Steam Locomotive, but it never received any major railway backing.

Locations where new builds are taking place include:

GWR 1014 County of Glamorgan & GWR 2999 Lady of Legend, both being built at Didcot Railway Centre

GWR 6880 Betton Grange, GWR 4709 & LMS 5551 The Unknown Warrior, all being built at Llangollen Railway

LNER 2007 Prince of Wales, Darlington Locomotive Works

LNER 2001 Cock O' The North, Doncaster

Pennsylvania Railroad 5550, Pottstown, Pennsylvania

BR 72010 Hengist, Great Central Railway

BR 77021, TBA

BR 82045, Severn Valley Railway

BR 84030 & LBSCR 32424 Beachy Head, both being built at Bluebell Railway

MS&LR/GCR 567, Ruddington Great Central Railway, Northern Section

VR V499, Victoria, Australia

In 2012, the Coalition for Sustainable Rail project was started in the US with the goal of creating a modern higher-speed steam locomotive, incorporating the improvements proposed by Livio Dante Porta and others, and using torrefied biomass as solid fuel. The fuel has been recently developed by the University of Minnesota in a collaboration between the university's Institute on the Environment (IonE) and Sustainable Rail International (SRI), an organisation set up to explore the use of steam traction in a modern railway setup. The group have received the last surviving (but non-running) ATSF 3460 class steam locomotive (No. 3463) via donation from its previous owner in Kansas, the Great Overland Station Museum. They hope to use it as a platform for developing "the world's cleanest, most powerful passenger locomotive", capable of speeds up to 130 mph (210 km/h). Named "Project 130", it aims to break the world steam-train speed record set by LNER Class A4 4468 Mallard in the UK at 126 mph (203 km/h). However, any demonstration of the project's claims is yet to be seen.

In Germany, a small number of fireless steam locomotives are still working in industrial service, e.g. at power stations, where an on-site supply of steam is readily available.

The future use of steam locomotives in the United Kingdom is in doubt because of government policy on climate change. The Heritage Railway Association is working with the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Heritage Rail in an effort to continue running steam locomotives on coal.

Many tourist railroads use oil-fired steam locomotives (or have converted their locomotives to run on oil) to reduce their environmental footprint, and because fuel oil can be easier to obtain than coal of the proper type and sizing for locomotives. For example, the Grand Canyon Railway runs its steam locomotives on used vegetable oil.

An organization called the Coalition for Sustainable Rail (CSR) is developing an environmentally friendly coal substitute made from torrefied biomass. In early 2019, they performed a series of tests using Everett Railroad to evaluate the performance of the biofuel, with positive results. The biofuel was found to burn slightly faster and hotter than coal. The goal of the project is primarily to find a sustainable fuel for historic steam locomotives on tourist railroads, but CSR has also suggested that, in the future, steam locomotives powered by torrefied biomass could be an environmentally and economically superior alternative to diesel locomotives. Also, a large vat containing salt may be used without needing to replenishing the medium. Large heating elements would be one method of recharging the system, however, it is possible to pump molten salt as well, removing the cooled salt and replenishing from facilities which contain a much larger vat.

Steam locomotives have been present in popular culture since the 19th century. Folk songs from that period including " I've Been Working on the Railroad" and the " Ballad of John Henry" are a mainstay of American music and culture.

Many steam locomotive toys have been made, and railway modelling is a popular hobby.

Steam locomotives are often portrayed in fictional works, notably The Railway Series by the Rev W. V. Awdry, The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper, The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg, and the Hogwarts Express from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. They have also been featured in many children's television shows, such as Thomas & Friends, based on characters from the books by Awdry, and Ivor the Engine created by Oliver Postgate.

The Hogwarts Express also appears in the Harry Potter series of films, portrayed by GWR 4900 Class 5972 Olton Hall in a special Hogwarts livery. The Polar Express appears in the animated movie of the same name.

A number of computer and video games feature steam locomotives. Railroad Tycoon, produced in 1990, was named "one of the best computer games of the year".

There are two notable examples of steam locomotives used as charges on heraldic coats of arms. One is that of Darlington, which displays Locomotion No. 1. The other is the original coat of arms of Swindon, not currently in use, which displays a basic steam locomotive.

Steam locomotives are a popular topic for coin collectors. The 1950 Silver 5 Peso coin of Mexico has a steam locomotive on its reverse as the prominent feature.

The 20 euro Biedermeier Period coin, minted 11 June 2003, shows on the obverse an early model steam locomotive (the ) on Austria's first railway line, the Kaiser Ferdinands-Nordbahn. The Ajax can still be seen today in the Technisches Museum Wien. As part of the 50 State Quarters program, the quarter representing the US state of Utah depicts the ceremony where the two halves of the First transcontinental railroad met at Promontory Summit in 1869. The coin recreates a popular image from the ceremony with steam locomotives from each company facing each other while the golden spike is being driven.

The novel " Night on the Galactic Railroad" by Kenji Miyazawa is centered on the idea of a steam train traveling among the stars. Miyazawa's novel later inspired Leiji Matsumoto's successful " Galaxy Express 999" series.

Another Japanese televisual franchise, Super Sentai, features monsters based on steam locomotives.

Charge Man, a Robot Master from the fifth installment of the Mega Man series is based on a steam locomotive.

1. ^ Fowler, George Little (1906). Locomotive dictionary; an illustrated vocabulary of terms which designate American Railroad locomotives, their parts, attachments and details of construction, with definitions and illustrations of typical British locomotive practice; five thousand one hundred and forty-eight illustrations. New York: Railroad Gazette. ISBN 9780912318202.

2. Hamilton Ellis (1968). The Pictorial Encyclopedia of Railways. Hamlyn Publishing Group. p. 20.

3. ^ Ellis, Hamilton (1968). The Pictorial Encyclopedia of Railways. pp. 24-30. Hamlyn Publishing Group.

4. ^ Payton, Philip (2004). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press.

5. ^ Tzanakakis, Konstantinos (2013). The Railway Track and Its Long Term Behaviour: A Handbook for a Railway Track of High Quality. Springer Science+Business Media. ISBN 9783642360510 - via Google Books.

6. ^ "Steam train anniversary begins". BBC. 21 February 2004. A south Wales town has begun months of celebrations to mark the 200th anniversary of the invention of the steam locomotive. Merthyr Tydfil was the location where, on 21 February 1804, Richard Trevithick took the world into the railway age when he set one of his high-pressure steam engines on a local iron master's tram rails

7. ^ Stover, John F. (1987). History of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press. pp. 35-36. ISBN 0-911198-81-4.

8. ^ Hilton, John (1986). "Steam Locomotive Boilers". Back Track. No. (Special Introductory Issue). Atlantic Transport Publishers. pp. xl-xli. ISSN 0955-5382. OCLC 226007088.

9. ^ White, John H., Jr. (1997). American Locomotives, an Engineering History 1830-1880, Revised and Expanded Edition. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 85. ISBN 0-8018-5714-7.

10. ^ Cochran, Jason (2 February 2009). "Disneyland's Trains Save Money by Switching to Used French Fry Oil". AOL. Archived from the original on 18 January 2017.

11. ^ Scott, Ron; GN Large Atlantics (Profile Publications Berks UK - no date), p. 129

12. ^ Cyclopedia of Engineering, Volume III, Editor Louis Derr, American Technical Society Chicago 1919, p. 224

13. ^ Rolt, L. T. C. (1976). Red for danger : a history of railway accidents and railway safety (3rd ed.). Newton Abbot: David & Charles. p. 33. ISBN 9780715372920.

14. ^ Handbook for Railway Steam Locomotive Enginemen. London: British Transport Commission. 1957. pp. 126-127. OCLC 4431123.

15. ^ "The Steam Locomotive In America, Its Development in the Twentieth Century", Alfred W. Bruce, First Edition, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc 1952, p. 262

16. ^ "Steam Still Rules the Rails" Popular Science, December 1937, drawing pp. 32-33 on multi-cylinders arrangement

17. British Railways' Last Steam Locomotive ^ Railway Gazette 23 March 1960 p. 355

18. ^ Meiklejohn, Bernard (January 1906). "New Motors on Railroads: Electric and Gasoline Cars Replacing the Steam Locomotive". The World's Work: A History of Our Time. XIII: 8437-8454.

19. ^ "Railway Extension Across the Andes: reactivation and modernisation of existing fleet of 75 cm gauge 2-10-2 steam locomotives". Archived from the original on 28 September 2007.

20. ^ Wardale, David (1998). The Red Devil and Other Tales from the Age of Steam. Published by the author. ISBN 0-9529998-0-3. Archived from the original on 6 February 2010.

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Henry Greenly, Model Locomotive (New York, 1905)

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W. E. Dalby, Economical Working of Locomotives (London, 1906)

A. I. Taylor, Modern British Locomotives (New York, 1907)

E. L. Ahrons, The Development of British Locomotive Design (London, 1914)

E. L. Ahrons, Steam Engine Construction and Maintenance (London, 1921)

J. F. Gairns, Locomotive Compounding and Superheating (Philadelphia, 1907)

Angus Sinclair, Development of the Locomotive Engine (New York, 1907)

Vaughn Pendred, The Railway Locomotive, What it is and Why it is What it is (London, 1908)

Brosius and Koch, Die Schule des Lokomotivführers (thirteenth edition, three volumes, Wiesbaden, 1909-1914)

G. L. Fowler, Locomotive Breakdowns, Emergencies, and their Remedies (seventh edition, New York, 1911)

Fisher and Williams, Pocket Edition of Locomotive Engineering (Chicago, 1911)

T. A. Annis, Modern Locomotives (Adrian Michigan, 1912)

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Gerald A Dee, A Lifetime of Railway Photography in Photographer Profile, Train Hobby Publications, Studfield, 1998. (Australian steam)

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Раков В.А. Локомотивы отечественных железных дорог 1845-1955 Транспорт, Москва, 1995
(Rakov V.A. Locomotives of fatherland's railways 1845-1955 Transport, Moscow, 1995 )

J.J.G. Koopmans: The fire burns much better ... NL-Venray 2006, ISBN 90-6464-013-0

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A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomotive's boiler to the point where it becomes gaseous and its volume increases 1,700 times.

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Within a few years of his death in 1848 George Stephenson was called 'the father of the railways', but that accolade has been challenged because there were other engineers involved in the development of the world's first railway system. The most notable was Robert Trevithick, a Cornishman, who in 1803 built the first steam locomotive to run on rails, which were essential because an adequately powerful engine was too heavy for roads or wooden tracks. Others followed his lead and Christian Wolmar in his book The Great Railway Revolution suggests that Stephenson, who had a talent for improving other people's ideas, was not so much the father of the railways as their midwife. Father or midwife, George Stephenson rose to fame from humble beginnings. He was born at Wylam in Northumberland in 1781, the son of illiterate working-class parents. His father worked in the Wylam colliery and so did young George from his early teens. He never went to school, but at 18 he was teaching himself to read and write (though writing would never be his strong suit) and was also getting basic tuition in arithmetic. He worked at various other collieries in the area in the early 1800s, including the one at Killingworth north of Newcastle, and developed such skill with engines that in 1812 he was appointed 'engine wright', or chief mechanic, at Killingworth. There in 1814 he built a locomotive called Blucher (often spelled Blutcher) in honour of the Prussian general, which could haul eight waggons loaded with 30 tons of coal at a speed of four miles per hour. Not content with that, he soon dramatically improved the engine's steam system to give it greater pulling power. It was this that made Blucher the first fully effective steam railway locomotive.

Stephenson went on to devise an improved type of railway track and he built more locomotives for Killingworth and other collieries. He was becoming a respected figure and in 1821 he persuaded a businessman who was planning a horse-drawn railway from Stockton-on-Tees to Darlington in County Durham to order a steam locomotive for the line. In 1825 the engine, later called Locomotion, took 450 people 25 miles from Darlington to Stockton at 15 miles per hour. This was the first outing of the world's first public passenger steam train. By 1830 Stephenson's new locomotive, the Rocket, which could achieve a speed of 36 miles per hour, was operating on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in Lancashire with other 'iron horses' built in the factory he had now opened in Newcastle. The railway age had begun and George Stephenson was its guiding spirit.

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George Stephenson's First Steam Locomotive

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Within a few years of his death in 1848 George Stephenson was called 'the father of the railways', but that accolade has been challenged because there were other engineers involved in the development of the world's first railway system.

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The era of the steamboat began in the late 1700s, thanks initially to Scotsman James Watt, who, in 1769 patented an improved version of the steam engine that helped usher in the Industrial Revolution and spurred other inventors on to explore how technology could be used to propel boats, revolutionizing transportation in the United States.

The First Steamboats

John Fitch was the first inventor to build a steamboat in the United States -- a 45-foot boat which successfully traveled on the Delaware River on August 22, 1787.

He later built a larger vessel that carried passengers and freight between Philadelphia and Burlington, New Jersey. After a contentious battle with another inventor, James Rumsey, over claims to a similar design for a steamboat, he was ultimately granted his first United States patent for a steamboat on August 26, 1791. However, he was not awarded a monopoly so was still in competition with Rumsey and other inventors.

Between 1785 and 1796, John Fitch constructed four different steamboats that successfully plied rivers and lakes to demonstrate the feasibility of using steam for water locomotion. His models utilized various combinations of propulsive force, including ranked paddles (patterned after Indian war canoes), paddle wheels and screw propellers. But while his boats were mechanically successful, Fitch failed to pay sufficient attention to construction and operating costs and, having lost investors to other inventors, was unable to stay afloat financially.

Robert Fulton, the "Father of Steam Navigation"

That honor would go to American inventor Robert Fulton, who had successfully built and operated a submarine in France in 1801, before turning his talents to the steamboat. His achievements in making steamboats a commercial success was why he's known as the "father of steam navigation."

Fulton was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on November 14, 1765. While his early education was limited, he displayed considerable artistic talent and inventiveness. At the age of 17, he moved to Philadelphia, where he established himself as a painter. Advised to go abroad because of ill health, he moved to London in 1786. Eventually, his lifelong interest in scientific and engineering developments, especially in the application of steam engines, supplanted his interest in art.

During this time, Fulton secured English patents for machines with a wide variety of functions. He was also interested in canal systems. In 1797, European conflicts led Fulton to begin work on weapons against piracy, including submarines, mines, and torpedoes. He later moved to France, where he worked on canal systems. In 1800, he built a successful "diving boat," which he named the Nautilus. Neither the French nor the English were sufficiently interested to induce Fulton to continue his submarine design.

His interest in building a steamboat continued, however. In 1802, Robert Fulton contracted with Robert Livingston to construct a steamboat for use on the Hudson River. Over the next four years, he built prototypes in Europe.

He returned to New York in 1806. On August 17, 1807, the Clermont, Robert Fulton's first American steamboat, left New York for Albany and served as the inauguration of the first commercial steamboat service in the world.

Robert Fulton died on February 24, 1815, and was buried in Old Trinity Churchyard, New York City.

The Clermont and the 150-Mile Trip

On August 7, 1807, Robert Fulton's Clermont went from New York City to Albany making history with a 150-mile trip taking 32 hours at an average speed of about 5 miles-per-hour. Four years later, Robert Fulton and his partner Robert Livingston designed the "New Orleans" and put it into service as a passenger and freight boat along the lower Mississippi River. And by 1814, Robert Fulton together with Robert Livingston's brother Edward were offering regular steamboat and freight service between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi.

Their boats traveled at the rates of eight miles per hour downstream and three miles per hour upstream.

Steamboat Developments

In 1816, inventor Henry Miller Shreve launched his steamboat "Washington," which completed the voyage from New Orleans to Louisville, Kentucky in twenty-five days. Vessel design continued to improve and by 1853, the trip to Louisville took only four and one-half days.

Between 1814 and 1834, New Orleans steamboat arrivals increased from 20 to 1200 a year. The boats transported cargoes of cotton, sugar, and passengers. Throughout the eastern part of the U.S., steamboats contributed greatly to the economy as a means of transporting agricultural and industrial supplies.

Steam propulsion and railroads developed separately, but it was not until railroads adopted the technology of steam that they began to flourish. By the 1870s, railroads had begun to supplant steamboats as the major transporter of both goods and passengers.

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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The era of the steamboat began in the late 1700s, thanks initially to Scotsman James Watt, who, in 1769 patented an improved version of the steam engine that helped usher in the Industrial Revolution and spurred other inventors on to explore how technology could be used to propel boats, revolutionizing transportation in the United States.

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A Lady's Life in the Gold Rush

'Really, everybody ought to go to the mines just to see how little it takes to make people comfortable in the world,' Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clapp wrote from the mines in California, to her sister Molly in New England. She penned 23 letters in all, from September 13, 1851, through November 21, 1852, describing life at Rich Bar and nearby Indian Bar, on the 'East Branch of the North Fork of Feather River,' roughly 120 miles northeast of Sacramento, in present-day Plumas National Forest.

Louise Clapp's letters were published as a series, from January 1854 through December 1855, under the nom de plume 'Dame Shirley,' in Ferdinand Ewer's short-lived literary journal: The Pioneer: or California Monthly Magazine. Ewer informed readers that the letters 'were not (originally) intended for publication, and have been inserted with scarcely an erasure from us.' Among those who read the series was Bret Harte (see August 1995 Wild West). Harte was influenced by the Shirley letters when he wrote The Luck of Roaring Camp and other California Gold Rush stories. Nineteenth century historian, philosopher and writer Josiah Royce said the Shirley letters 'form the best account of an early mining camp that is known to me.' And in the 20th century, when the Book Club of California invited 16 leading authorities to list the 10 best primary sources on the California Gold Rush, 13 named the Shirley letters. No other source received that much recognition.

Louisa Amelia Knapp Smith was born on July 28, 1819, in Elizabeth, N.J., the daughter of Moses and Lois (Lee) Smith. Her father was the schoolmaster at the local academy. The family eventually moved back to her father's hometown of Amherst, Mass., where Moses died in 1832, at age 47. Louise was 13 at the time. Lois followed her husband to the grave five years later, leaving seven orphans. Louise was entrusted to an attorney and family friend in Amherst, Osmyn Baker. He sent her to school at the Female Seminary in Charlestown, Mass., and the Amherst Academy. Her closest sibling was Mary Jane, or 'Molly,' to whom she later wrote her now famous letters. Louise may have met Amherst residents Emily Dickinson and Helen Hunt (Jackson), but Louise, as historian Rodman Wilson Paul notes, was 11 years older than her literary neighbors.

Someone with whom Louise did exchange letters was Alexander Hill Everett. They met by chance in August 1839 while traveling by stagecoach in southern Vermont. Louise Smith was then a delicate, bright, golden-haired 20-year-old student. Alexander Everett was a widely traveled diplomat 30 years her elder. She was fascinated by him, in an academic way. He was infatuated with her. As her literary mentor, he advised, on October 31, 1839: 'If you were to add to the love of reading the habit of writing you would find a new and inexhaustible source of comfort and satisfaction opening upon you.' She accepted his advice, rejected his love. Everett died in Macao, China, in June 1847, the same year he received a letter from Louise announcing her engagement to a young doctor.

The man Louise Smith married was five years her junior. Fayette Clapp had graduated from Brown University in 1848 and was a medical student and doctor's apprentice when he met Louise. Both Louise and Fayette Clapp longed to go west, so when they heard that gold had been discovered in California, the newlyweds packed their trunks and boarded the schooner Manilla. They sailed out of New York Harbor in August 1849, arriving in San Francisco about five months later. The foggy, damp bay weather did not agree with Fayette. He suffered from bilious attacks, fever, ague and jaundice while in San Francisco. Louise, on the other hand, liked the hilly city. She wrote: 'What with its many-costumed, many-tongued, many-visaged population: its flashy looking squares, built one day and burned the next; its wickedly beautiful gambling houses; its gay stores where the richest productions of every nation can be found; and its wild, free, unconventional style of living, it possesses, for the young adventurer especially, a strange charm.'

For health reasons, Fayette Clapp moved inland with his wife, settling in Plumas City, a place Louise described as 'a was-to-have-been city' of 'vanishing splendors.' Built near the Feather River, between Sacramento City and Marysville, Plumas City no longer exists.

On June 7, 1851, Fayette set out with a friend to Rich Bar, hoping the pure mountain air would be good for his health. He also hoped that good mining investment opportunities existed at the camp, and that there was a shortage of doctors. In many other places in California, doctors and lawyers were already in abundance. Luckily for young Dr. Clapp, prospects at Rich Bar were good on all counts. Once he had successfully established himself, he returned for his wife in September. Since Louise was provided with a cook and a laundress, she had plenty of time for writing.

There were few women at Rich Bar. Louise found only four besides herself. The mining camp had no brothel, although the Empire, a combination inn, restaurant and general store, had originally been constructed with a brothel in mind. The venture had failed and the gamblers who had invested $8,000 - building and furnishing the two-story structure with its 'elegant mirror,' glass windows, monte tables, and 'bedsteads so heavy that nothing short of a giant's strength could move them' - sold out to Curtis and Louise Bancroft for a few hundred dollars.

Louise Bancroft (referred to in the letters as 'Mrs. B-') was the first woman Louise Clapp met at Rich Bar. The writer describes her as 'a gentle and amiable looking woman, about twenty-five years of age.' When Louise Clapp entered the Empire, Mrs. Bancroft 'was cooking supper for some half-a-dozen people, while her really pretty boy, who lay kicking furiously in his champagne basket cradle and screaming...had that day completed just two weeks of his earthly pilgrimage.'

The other women at the camp included 'Mrs. R-,' whose name has not yet been decoded by historians. She lived with her husband in a three-room canvas house she kept exceptionally clean. Louise dubbed her 'the little sixty-eight-pounder queen.' In her fifth letter, she quotes a miner who praised Mrs. R- enthusiastically. 'Magnificent woman that,' the miner said. 'A wife of the right sort she is. Why, she earnt her old man nine-hundred dollars in nine weeks, clear of all expenses, by washing! Such women ain't common I tell you; if they were, a man might marry and make money by the operation.'

Mrs. Nancy Bailey was also tiny. She shared a dirt floor cabin with her husband and three children, but she fell sick and died weeks after Louise arrived. 'I have just returned from the funeral of poor Mrs. B-,' Louise wrote, 'who died of peritonitis, a common disease in this country.' The body was placed in a coffin and carried, with a monte tablecloth for a pall, to a mountainside cemetery, where the gravestone still stands.

The first woman to arrive at Rich Bar ran the Indiana Hotel with her father. She was called the Indiana Girl. Louise wrote about her in her second letter:

The sweet name of girl seems sadly incongruous when applied to such a gigantic piece of humanity....The far-off roll of her mighty voice, booming through two closed doors and a long entry, added greatly to the severe attack of nervous headache under which I was suffering when she called. This gentle creature wears the thickest kind of miner's boots, and has the dainty habit of wiping her dishes on her apron! Last spring she walked to this place and packed fifty pounds of flour on her back down that awful hill - the snow being five feet deep at the time.

All the same, several men, including Yank, keeper of a log cabin store farther up the bar, were'smitten with the charms of the Indiana Girl,' Louise admits in her ninth letter. Yank himself was a character. His aspiration was to be a dandy grafter. 'He takes me largely into his confidence, as to the various ways he has of doing green miners,' Louise wrote. As for his log cabin store, she described it as 'the most comical olla podrida [potpourri] of heterogeneous merchandise that I ever saw. There is nothing you can ask for but what he has - from crow bars down to cambric needles; from velveteen trowsers up to broadcloth coats of the jauntiest description....His collection of novels is by far the largest, the greasiest, and the 'yellowest kivered' of any to be found on the river.'

In her seventh letter, Louise describes the log cabin Fayette acquired for her on the sparsely populated Indian Bar, upriver from Rich Bar but within walking distance:

Enter my dear; you are perfectly welcome; besides, we could not keep you out if we would, as there is not even a latch on the canvas door....The room into which we have just entered is about twenty feet square. It is lined over the top with white cotton cloth....The sides are hung with a gaudy chintz, which I consider a perfect marvel of calico printing. The artist seems to have exhausted himself on roses...from earliest budhood up to the ravishing beauty of the 'last rose of summer.' A curtain of the above described chintz divides off a portion of the room, behind which stands a bedstead....The fireplace is built of stones and mud, the chimney finished off with alternate layers of rough sticks....The mantle piece...is formed of a beam of wood, covered with strips of tin procured from cans, upon which still remain in black hieroglyphics, the names of the different eatables which they formerly contained....I suppose that it would be no more than civil to call a hole two feet square in one side of the room, a window, although it is as yet guiltless of glass.

The path between Indian Bar, where the Clapp cabin stood, and Rich Bar, where Fayette had his office, was somewhat precarious. Footbridges across the river were felled logs still wrapped in bark and moss. Large rocks and countless mining pits, 6 or more feet deep, with accompanying gravel heaps, had to be skirted. One pit was only a few feet from their cabin door.

On the way to Indian Bar, Louise recorded: 'The first thing that attracted my attention, as my new home came in view, was the blended blue, red and white of the American banner...suspended on the Fourth of July last, by a patriotic sailor, who climbed to the top of the [cedar] tree to which he attached it, cutting away the branches as he descended, until it stood among its brethren, a beautiful moss-wreathed Liberty pole, flinging to the face of Heaven the glad colors of the Free.'

She also glimpsed the 'artificial elegance' of a hotel:

Over the entrance...is painted in red capitals...the name of the great Humboldt spelt without the d. This is the only hotel in this vicinity, and as there is a really excellent bowling alley attached to it, and the bar-room has a floor on which the miners can dance, and, above all, a cook who can play the violin, it is very popular. But the clinking of glasses, and the swaggering air of some of the drinkers, reminds us that it is no place for a lady.

Louise Clapp enjoyed being a 'lady,' but she sometimes showed an unladylike willfulness, describing herself as the sort of 'obstinate little personage, who has always been haunted with a passionate desire to do everything which people said she could not do.' Taking up residence in a mining town was an adventure most ladies avoided. So was panning for gold. When Louise washed a single pan of dirt, she found $3.25 in gold placer. She also discovered it was hard, dirty work, and she did not repeat the experiment, not for years. But she did observe and write about the gold miners. The methods they used, as well as the claim system that governed them, is the subject of her 15th'severely utilitarian' letter:

First, let me explain to you the 'claiming' system. As there are no State laws upon the subject, each mining community is permitted to make its own. Here, they have decided that no man may 'claim' an area of more than forty foot square. This he'stakes off' and puts a notice upon it....If he does not choose to 'work it' immediately, he is obliged to renew the notice every ten days; for without this precaution, any other person has the right to 'jump it'....There are many ways of evading the above law. For instance, an individual can 'hold' as many claims as he pleases if he keeps a man at work in each....The laborer...can jump the claim of the very man who employs him...[but] generally prefers to receive the six dollars per diem, of which he is sure...[rather than] running the risk of a claim not proving valuable....The labor of excavation is extremely difficult, on account of the immense rocks...[in] the soil. Of course, no man can work out a claim alone. For that reason...they congregate in companies of four or six, generally designating themselves by the name of the place from whence the majority of the members have emigrated; for example, the 'Illinois,' 'Bunker Hill,' 'Bay State,' etc., companies. In many places the surface soil, or 'top dirt,' 'pays' when worked in a 'Long Tom.'

Some companies discarded top dirt and chose instead to hunt for gold in bedrock crevices. They dug 'coyote holes' into the sides of surrounding hills, creating tunnels 'that sometimes extended hundreds of feet,' in order to get at the bedrock. A large company of miners pooled resources and built a wing dam and flume that diverted water from the riverbed, where they expected to find 'rich diggings' in the bedrock. Of 'the dreadful flume,' as Louise calls it, she wrote: 'The machinery keeps up the most dismal moaning and shrieking, painfully suggestive of a suffering child.'

In her third letter, Louise paints a picture of the setting in which the miners worked, describing Rich Bar as 'a tiny valley, about eight-hundred yards in length and thirty in width...hemmed in by lofty hills, almost perpendicular, draperied to their very summits with beautiful fir trees; the blue bosomed 'Plumas' or Feather River...undulating along their base.' Here, the mining town sprang up suddenly, 'as if a fairy's wand had been waved above the bar.' There were 'about forty tenements...round tents, square tents, plank hovels, log cabins, etc. - the residences varying in elegance and convenience from the palatial splendor of 'The Empire' down to a 'local habitation,' formed of pine boughs and covered with old calico shirts.'

The people populating Rich Bar and Indian Bar varied as much as their houses. Besides white Americans and Californios (the Spanish-speaking residents who Clapp called 'Spaniards'), there were Swedes, Chilenos, Frenchmen, Mexicans, Indians, Hawaiians, Englishmen, Italians, Germans, American blacks and mulattos. The mulattos included Humbolt-owner Ned 'Paganini' (as Louise nicknamed him) and the legendary mountain man and trailblazer Jim Beckwourth. Louise describes Beckwourth in her eighth letter:

He is fifty years of age, perhaps, and speaks several languages to perfection. As he has been a wanderer for many years and for a long time was a principal chief of the Crow Indians, his adventures are extremely interesting. He chills the blood of the green young miners, who, unacquainted with the arts of war and subjugation, congregate around him [to hear] the cold-blooded manner in which he relates the Indian fights that he has been engaged in.

Unlike Jim Beckwourth, most men at Rich and Indian bars could not speak more than one language fluently, although some Americans seem to have tried. In her 14th letter, Louise wrote: 'Nothing is more amusing than to observe the different styles in which...Americans talk at the unfortunate Spaniard.' She adds that 'mistakes made on the other side are often quite as amusing.' Fayette's colleague, Dr. Canas, told Louise of a Chileno who heard an American use the words'some bread' when purchasing said item, and immediately afterward informed his friends that the English word for bread was the same as the Spanish word for hat - sombrero. Unfortunately, the humor in such misunderstandings was often overlooked. Alcohol, gambling losses, and envy of a neighbor's mining success contributed to ill will. Yet things remained relatively peaceful through the winter of 1851-52.

In February 1852, provisions were becoming scarce. The rancheros who had been driving beef herds into the valley and the mule drivers who brought in onions, potatoes, butter and coffee could not get through the deep snow that covered the hills surrounding the bars. So the Clapps and their neighbors lived for three months on flour, dark ham, salted mackerel, and rusty pork. And when the snow finally melted, spring floods commenced, sweeping away flume machinery, log bridges, long toms, cradles, a newly finished sawmill and several men. By mid-May, the waters calmed down and fresh provisions arrived. So did a large number of mostly American newcomers. On May 25, Louise noted: 'Hundreds of people have arrived upon our Bar within the last few days; drinking saloons are springing up in every direction; the fluming operations are rapidly progressing, and all looks favorably for a busy and prosperous summer.' Some of these newcomers had fought in the Mexican-American War and tended to perceive Spanish-speaking people as enemies.

Meanwhile, Mexicans at the mines expressed growing frustration over the lack of justice where they were concerned. In her 16th letter, Louise writes sardonically:

A few evenings ago, a Spaniard was stabbed by an American. It seems that the presumptuous foreigner had the impertinence to ask very humbly and meekly of that most noble representative of the stars and stripes, if the latter would pay him a few dollars which he had owed him for some time. His high mightiness, the Yankee, was not going to put up with any such impertinence, and the poor Spaniard received, for answer, several inches of cold steel in his breast, which inflicted a very dangerous wound. Nothing was done and very little was said about this atrocious affair.

She goes on to explain that at Rich Bar, 'they have passed a set of resolutions...one of which is to the effect that no foreigner shall work the mines on that Bar. This has caused nearly all the Spaniards [Californios] to immigrate upon Indian Bar.' Two years earlier, the California Legislature had passed a law requiring all foreigners to pay a $20-a-month tax (later reduced to $4) for the right to stake a claim and mine it.

On the Fourth of July, tensions between Californios and Americans exploded. While Dr. and Mrs. Clapp joined other sober Americans in celebrating Independence Day with speeches, poetry, music and dancing at the Empire on Rich Bar, drunken celebrants made the rounds at Indian Bar. When the Clapps returned to their cabin at Indian Bar, a man gave them an 'excited account' of an American who had been knifed during a melee. Louis Clapp wrote about it in her 19th letter:

He said...Domingo - a tall, majestic-looking Spaniard, a perfect type of the novelistic bandit of Old Spain - had stabbed Tom Somers, a young Irishman, but a naturalized citizen of the United States,...[and while] brandishing threateningly the long bloody knife with which he had inflicted the wound upon his victim...[had paraded] up and down the street unmolested. It seems that when Tom Somers fell, the Americans, being unarmed, were seized with a sudden panic and fled. There was a rumor (unfounded, as it afterwards proved) to the effect that the Spaniards had on this day conspired to kill all the Americans on the river. In a few moments, however, the latter rallied and made a rush at the murderer, who immediately plunged into the river and swam across to Missouri Bar; eight or shots were fired at him...not one of which hit him.

In the meanwhile,...Spaniards who...thought that the Americans had arisen against them...barricaded themselves in a drinking saloon, determined to defend themselves against the massacre which was fully expected would follow....In the bake shop, which stands next to our cabin, young Tom Somers lay straightened for the grave...while over his dead body a Spanish woman was weeping and moaning in the most piteous and heart-rending manner. The Rich Barians, who had heard a most exaggerated account of the rising of the Spaniards against the Americans, armed with rifles, pistols, clubs, dirks, etc., were rushing down the hill by hundreds. Each one added fuel to his rage by crowding into the little bakery, to gaze upon the blood-bathed bosom of the victim....Then arose the most fearful shouts of 'Down with the Spaniards'....'Don't let one of the murderous devils remain.'

The more sensible and sober of the Americans partly quieted the angry crowd. Still, Fayette Clapp wanted his wife to join two other women who lived on a nearby hill, where things would be safer should a serious fight erupt. Louise said she wanted to stay where she was, but finally, 'like a dutiful wife,' she went up the hill.

We three women, left entirely alone, seated ourselves upon a log overlooking the strange scene below. The Bar was a sea of heads, bristling with guns, rifles, and clubs....All at once, we were startled by the firing of a gun, and...saw a man [being] led into the log cabin, while another was carried, apparently lifeless, into a Spanish drinking saloon....Luckily for our nerves, a benevolent individual...came and told us what had happened.

It seems that an Englishman, the owner of a house of the vilest description, a person, who is said to have been the primary cause of all the troubles of the day, attempted to force his way through the line of armed men which had been formed at each side of the street....In his drunken fury, he tried to wrest a gun from one of them, which being accidentally discharged in the struggle, inflicted a severe wound upon a Mr. Oxley and shattered in the most dreadful manner the thigh of Sr. Pizarro....This frightful accident recalled the people to their senses....They elected a Vigilance Committee and authorized persons to go...arrest the suspected Spaniards.

The first act of the Committee was to try a Mejicana who had been foremost in the fray. She has always worn male attire, and on this occasion, armed with a pair of pistols, she fought like a very fury. Luckily, inexperienced in the use of fire-arms, she wounded no one. She was sentenced to leave the Bar by day-light....The next day, the Committee tried five or six Spaniards....Two of them were sentenced to be whipped, the remainder to leave the Bar that evening; the property of all to be confiscated....Oh Mary! Imagine my anguish when I heard the first blow fall upon those wretched men. I had never thought that I should be compelled to hear such fearful sounds, and, although I immediately buried my head in my shawl, nothing can efface from memory the disgust and horror....One of these unhappy persons was a very gentlemanly young Spaniard, who implored for death in the most moving terms. He appealed to his judges in the most eloquent manner - as gentlemen, as men of honor; representing to them that to be deprived of life was nothing in comparison with the never-to-be-effaced stain of the vilest convict's punishment to which they had sentenced him. Finding all his entreaties disregarded, he swore a most solemn oath, that he would murder every American that he should chance to meet alone, and as he is a man of the most dauntless courage, and rendered desperate by a burning sense of disgrace...he will doubtless keep his word.

The above account probably inspired the flogging scene in The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, by Yellow Bird, aka John Rollin Ridge. Historian Joseph Henry Jackson notes in his book Bad Company that the Shirley letters were in Ferdinand Ewer's possession when Ridge researched his book, and that he frequently visited Ewer's office.

Not long after the floggings, Louise reported that a hanging and an attempted suicide had occurred at the mines. The first involved a man accused of murdering and robbing his employer. The second involved a Henry Cook, who apparently slit his own throat. After Dr. Clapp tended his wound, Cook decided to accuse Ned, owner of the Humbolt, of attempted murder. Ned's friends came to his defense, and the charge was dropped, but tempers were high. Dr. Clapp was nearly mobbed for having bound the wound of a man they, according to Louise Capp, 'insisted upon shooting...reasoning [that]...'a man so hardened as to raise his hand against his own life will never hesitate to murder another!" In the end, the vigilantes decided to exile Cook instead.

Meanwhile, Señor Pizarro's wounded leg festered. It was amputated, but he did not regain his strength. Sick with dysentery, he died soon afterward. Oxley remained bedridden for weeks but eventually recovered, no thanks to 'the Moguls,' whom Louise Clapp refers to as'sleep killers.' The Moguls, actually members of the Vigilance Committee, apparently believed they were above the law. They began to 'parade the streets all night, howling, shouting, breaking into houses, taking wearied miners out of their beds and throwing them into the river....Nearly every night they built bonfires fearfully near some rag shanty, thus endangering the lives (or I should rather say the property - for as it is impossible to sleep, lives are emphatically safe) of the whole community. They retire about five o'clock in the morning; previously...posting notices to the effect, and that they will throw anyone who may disturb them into the river.'

In fall, the population began to decline swiftly. Louise noted that the flume miners, who had spent $2,000 to build a wing dam'six feet high and three-hundred feet in length, upon which thirty men labored nine days and a half,' had collected $41.70 in gold; 'nearly every person on the river received the same treatment from Dame Nature....Shopkeepers, restaurants, and gambling houses...were in the same moneyless condition.' Fayette had lost $1,000 in a prospecting investment, causing Louise to call mining 'Nature's lottery.'

Few people wanted to brave another winter on the bars, including the Clapps. In her last letter, dated November 21, 1852, Louise couldn't help 'fretting...at the dreadful prospect of being compelled to spend the winter here.' Yet when the day of departure came, she hesitated. 'My heart is heavy at the thought of departing forever from this place. I like this wild and barbarous life; I leave it with regret....Yes, Molly, smile if you will at my folly; but I go from the mountains with a deep heart sorrow. I look kindly to this existence, which to you seems so sordid and mean. Here, at least, I have been contented....You would hardly recognize the feeble and half-dying invalid, who drooped languidly out of sight, as night shut down between your straining gaze and the good ship Manilla...in the person of your now perfectly healthy sister.' Fayette Clapp, too, was perfectly healthy, but San Francisco again did not agree with him.

In 1853, Fayette sailed to Hawaii without Louise. In 1854, he showed up in Massachusetts. A year later, he headed west again, this time to Illinois. Louise chose to remain in San Francisco, where she taught school. She filed for divorce there in 1856. Although she kept Fayette's last name, she apparently added an 'e' to it, making her Louise A.K.S. Clappe. By the time the Civil War broke out, Fayette had moved to Columbia, Mo., and remarried.

Louise retired from teaching in 1878 and went to live in New York City, where she continued to write and lecture until 1897, when she moved into a retirement home founded by Bret Harte's nieces, Anna and Nina Knault, in Hanover Township, N.J. She died there on February 9, 1906. Although the California Gold Rush, which started 150 years ago, produced its share of heartfelt letters, the 'Dame Shirley' letters remain the biggest bonanza in the bunch.

This article was written by Lori Lee Wilson and originally appeared in the August 1999 issue of Wild West.p>For more great articles be sure to subscribe to magazine today!

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'Really, everybody ought to go to the mines just to see how little it takes to make people comfortable in the world,' Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clapp wrote from the mines in California, to her sister Molly in New England.

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The California Gold Rush was sparked by the discovery of gold nuggets in the Sacramento Valley in early 1848 and was arguably one of the most significant events to shape American history during the first half of the 19th century. As news spread of the discovery, thousands of prospective gold miners traveled by sea or over land to San Francisco and the surrounding area; by the end of 1849, the non-native population of the California territory was some 100,000 (compared with the pre-1848 figure of less than 1,000). A total of $2 billion worth of precious metal was extracted from the area during the Gold Rush, which peaked in 1852. .
WATCH: Gold Rush Money on HISTORY Vault
Sutter's Mill

On January 24, 1848, James Wilson Marshall, a carpenter originally from New Jersey, found flakes of gold in the American River at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Coloma, California.

At the time, Marshall was working to build a water-powered sawmill owned by John Sutter, a German-born Swiss citizen and founder of a colony of Nueva Helvetia (New Switzerland, which would later become the city of Sacramento). As Marshall later recalled of his historic discovery: "It made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold."

Did you know? Miners extracted more than 750,000 pounds of gold during the California Gold Rush.

Days after Marshall's discovery at Sutter's Mill, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, ending the Mexican-American War and leaving California in the hands of the United States-a remarkable twist of fate with important ramifications for an America eager for westward expansion.

At the time, the population of the territory consisted of 6,500 Californios (people of Spanish or Mexican descent); 700 foreigners (primarily Americans); and 150,000 Native Americans (barely half the number that had been there when Spanish settlers arrived in 1769).

Sutter, in fact, had enslaved hundreds of Native Americans and used them as a free source of labor and makeshift militia to defend his territory and expand his empire.

Gold Fever Strikes

Though Marshall and Sutter tried to keep news of the discovery under wraps, word got out, and by mid-March at least one newspaper was reporting that large quantities of gold were being turned up at Sutter's Mill. Though the initial reaction in San Francisco was disbelief, storekeeper Sam Brannan set off a frenzy when he paraded through town displaying a vial of gold obtained from Sutter's Creek.

By mid-June, shops and businesses stood empty, as some three-quarters of the male population of San Francisco had abandoned the city for the gold mines, and the number of miners in the area ballooned to some 4,000 by August.

As news reports-many wildly overblown-of the easy fortunes being made in California spread worldwide, some of the first migrants to arrive were those from lands accessible by boat, such as Oregon, the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii), Mexico, Chile, Peru and China.
WATCH: Columbus' Quest for Gold
Polk Spreads Gold Fever

When the news reached the East Coast, press reports were initially skeptical. Gold fever kicked off nationwide in earnest, however, after December 1848, when President James K. Polk announced the positive results of a report made by Colonel Richard Mason, California's military governor, in his inaugural address.

As Polk wrote, "The accounts of abundance of gold are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service."

The '49ers Come to California

Throughout 1849, people around the United States (mostly men) with gold fever borrowed money, mortgaged their property or spent their life savings to make the arduous journey to California. In pursuit of the kind of wealth they had never dreamed of, they left their families and hometowns. In turn, women left behind took on new responsibilities such as running farms or businesses and caring for their children alone.

Thousands of would-be gold miners, known as 49ers for the year they arrived, traveled overland across the mountains or by sea, sailing to Panama or even around Cape Horn, the southernmost point of South America.

By the end of the year, the non-native population of California was estimated at 100,000, (as compared with 20,000 at the end of 1848 and around 800 in March 1848). To accommodate the needs of the 49ers, gold mining towns had sprung up all over the region, complete with shops, saloons, brothels and other businesses seeking to make their own Gold Rush fortune.

The overcrowded chaos of the mining camps and towns grew ever more lawless, including rampant banditry, gambling, alcoholism, prostitution and violence. San Francisco, for its part, developed a bustling economy and became the central metropolis of the new frontier.

Gold Rush Politics

The Gold Rush undoubtedly sped up California's admission to the Union as the 31st state. In late 1849, California applied to enter the Union with a constitution that barred the Southern system of racial slavery, provoking a crisis in Congress between proponents of slavery and anti-slavery politicians.

According to the Compromise of 1850, proposed by Kentucky's Senator Henry Clay, California was allowed to enter as a free state, while the territories of Utah and New Mexico were left to decide the legal status of slavery for themselves.
READ MORE: When California (Briefly) Became Its Own Nation
California's Mines

After 1850, the surface gold in California largely disappeared, even as miners continued to arrive. Mining had always been difficult and dangerous labor, and striking it rich required good luck as much as skill and hard work. Moreover, the average daily take for an independent miner working with his pick and shovel had by then sharply decreased from what it had been in 1848.

As gold became more and more difficult to reach, the growing industrialization of mining drove more and more miners from independence into wage labor. The new technique of hydraulic mining, developed in 1853, brought enormous profits but destroyed much of the region's landscape.

Though gold mining continued throughout the 1850s, it had reached its peak by 1852, when some $81 million was pulled from the ground. After that year, the total take declined gradually, leveling off to around $45 million per year by 1857. Settlement in California continued, however, and by the end of the decade the state's population was 380,000.

Impact of the Gold Rush

New mining methods and the population boom in the wake of the California Gold Rush permanently altered the landscape of California. The technique of hydraulic mining brought enormous profits but destroyed much of the region's landscape.

Dams designed to supply water to mine sites in summer altered the course of rivers away from farmland, while sediment from mines clogged others. The logging industry in the area was born from the need to construct extensive canals and feed boilers at mines, further consuming natural resources.

In 1884, hydraulic mining was outlawed by court order, and soon agriculture became the dominant industry in California, and it remains so today. While a few mines and Gold Rush towns remain, much of the heritage of that era is preserved at places such as Bodie State Historic Park, a decaying ghost town, and at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, where Sutter's Mill once stood.

Sources

Environmental Impact of the Gold Rush. Calisphere.org.
After the Gold Rush. National Geographic.

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The California Gold Rush was sparked by the discovery of gold nuggets in the Sacramento Valley in early 1848 and was arguably one of the most significant events to shape American history during the first half of the 19th century.

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The definitive Oregon Trail resource--packed with maps, photos, descriptions, and fun facts.

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Imagine yourself an emigrant headed for Oregon: would promises of lush farmlands and a new beginning lure you to leave home and walk for weeks? More than 2,000 miles of trail ruts and traces can still be seen along the Oregon National Historic Trail in six states and serve as reminders of the sacrifices, struggles, and triumphs of early American settlers. Read More

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Oregon National Historic Trail (U.S. National Park Service)

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Imagine yourself an emigrant headed for Oregon: would promises of lush farmlands and a new beginning lure you to leave home and walk for weeks? More than 2,000 miles of trail ruts and traces can still be seen along the Oregon National Historic Trail in six states and serve as reminders of the sacrifices, struggles, and triumphs of early American settlers.

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The Battle of the Alamo during Texas' war for independence from Mexico lasted thirteen days, from February 23, 1836-March 6, 1836. In December of 1835, a group of Texan volunteer soldiers had occupied the Alamo, a former Franciscan mission located near the present-day city of San Antonio. On February 23, a Mexican force numbering in the thousands and led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna began a siege of the fort. Though vastly outnumbered, the Alamo's 200 defenders-commanded by James Bowie and William Travis and including the famed frontiersman Davy Crockett-held out for 13 days before the Mexican forces finally overpowered them. For Texans, the Battle of the Alamo became an enduring symbol of their heroic resistance to oppression and their struggle for independence, which they won later that year. The battle cry of "remember the Alamo" later became popular during the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848.

Early History of the Alamo

Spanish settlers built the Mission San Antonio de Valero, named for St. Anthony of Padua, on the banks of the San Antonio River around 1718. They also established the nearby military garrison of San Antonio de Béxar, which soon became the center of a settlement known as San Fernando de Béxar (later renamed San Antonio). The Mission San Antonio de Valero housed missionaries and their Native American converts for some 70 years until 1793, when Spanish authorities secularized the five missions located in San Antonio and distributed their lands among local residents.

Did you know? Ten years after Texas won its independence and shortly after it was annexed by the United States, U.S. soldiers revived the "Remember the Alamo!" battle cry while fighting against Mexican forces in the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848.

Beginning in the early 1800s, Spanish military troops were stationed in the abandoned chapel of the former mission. Because it stood in a grove of cottonwood trees, the soldiers called their new fort "El Alamo" after the Spanish word for cottonwood and in honor of Alamo de Parras, their hometown in Mexico. Military troops-first Spanish, then rebel and later Mexican-occupied the Alamo during and after Mexico's war for independence from Spain in the early 1820s. In the summer of 1821, Stephen Austin arrived in San Antonio along with some 300 U.S. families that the Spanish government had allowed to settle in Texas. The migration of U.S. citizens to Texas increased over the next decades, sparking a revolutionary movement that would erupt into armed conflict by the mid-1830s.

The Battle of the Alamo

In December 1835, in the early stages of Texas' war for independence from Mexico, a group of Texan (or Texian) volunteers led by George Collinsworth and Benjamin Milam overwhelmed the Mexican garrison at the Alamo and captured the fort, seizing control of San Antonio. By mid-February 1836, Colonel James Bowie and Lieutenant Colonel William B. Travis had taken command of Texan forces in San Antonio. Though Sam Houston, the newly appointed commander-in-chief of the Texan forces, argued that San Antonio should be abandoned due to insufficient troop numbers, the Alamo's defenders-led by Bowie and Travis-dug in nonetheless, prepared to defend the fort to the last. These defenders, who despite later reinforcements never numbered more than 200, included Davy Crockett, the famous frontiersman and former congressman from Tennessee, who had arrived in early February.

On February 23, a Mexican force comprising somewhere between 1,800 and 6,000 men (according to various estimates) and commanded by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna began a siege of the fort. The Texans held out for 13 days, but on the morning of March 6 Mexican forces broke through a breach in the outer wall of the courtyard and overpowered them. Santa Anna ordered his men to take no prisoners, and only a small handful of the Texans were spared. One of these was Susannah Dickinson, the wife of Captain Almaron Dickinson (who was killed) and her infant daughter Angelina. Santa Anna sent them to Houston's camp in Gonzalez with a warning that a similar fate awaited the rest of the Texans if they continued their revolt.

The Mexican forces also suffered heavy casualties in the Battle of the Alamo, losing between 600 and 1,600 men.

Legacy of the Alamo

From March to May, Mexican forces once again occupied the Alamo. For the Texans, the Battle of the Alamo became a symbol of heroic resistance and a rallying cry in their struggle for independence. On April 21, 1836, Sam Houston and some 800 Texans defeated Santa Anna's Mexican force of 1,500 men at San Jacinto (near the site of present-day Houston), shouting "Remember the Alamo!" as they attacked. The victory ensured the success of Texan independence: Santa Anna, who had been taken prisoner, came to terms with Houston to end the war. In May, Mexican troops in San Antonio were ordered to withdraw, and to demolish the Alamo's fortifications as they went.

'Remember The Alamo!'

In 1845, the United States annexed Texas. For many years afterward, the U.S. Army quartered troops and stored supplies at the Alamo. The Alamo remained a symbol of courage, and in the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, U.S. soldiers revived the "Remember the Alamo!" battle cry while fighting against Mexican forces.

The Alamo has been commemorated on everything from postage stamps to the 1960 film The Alamo starring John Wayne as Davy Crockett. In 1883, the state of Texas purchased the Alamo, later acquiring property rights to all the surrounding grounds. The Daughters of the Republic of Texas, a women's organization including descendants of the earliest Texan residents, has managed the Alamo since 1905. Today, more than 2.5 million people a year visit the Alamo. The 4.2-acre site includes some original structures dating back to the mission period.

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The Battle of the Alamo during Texas' war for independence from Mexico lasted thirteen days, from February 23, 1836-March 6, 1836. In December of 1835, a group of Texan volunteer soldiers had occupied the Alamo, a former Franciscan mission located near the present-day city of San Antonio.

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The Alamo today stands at the heart of San Antonio and the heart of what it means to be a Texan. It is managed by the Texas General Land Office on behalf of the people of Texas. People visit from all over the world to see and learn about the mission and fort's vital role in defending freedom. Battlefield tours, living history, a one-of-a-kind movie, summer camps, unique exhibits and more are available year-round on the Alamo grounds.

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The Alamo today stands at the heart of San Antonio and the heart of what it means to be a Texan. It is managed by the Texas General Land Office on behalf of the people of Texas. People visit from all over the world to see and learn about the mission and fort's vital role in defending freedom.

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The Lewis and Clark Expedition began in 1804, when President Thomas Jefferson tasked Meriwether Lewis with exploring lands west of the Mississippi River that comprised the Louisiana Purchase. Lewis chose William Clark as his co-leader for the mission. The excursion lasted over two years: Along the way they confronted harsh weather, unforgiving terrain, treacherous waters, injuries, starvation, disease and both friendly and hostile Native Americans. Nevertheless, the approximately 8,000-mile journey was deemed a huge success and provided new geographic, ecological and social information about previously uncharted areas of North America.

Who Were Lewis and Clark?

Meriwether Lewis was born in Virginia in 1774 but spent his early childhood in Georgia. He returned to Virginia as a teenager to receive his education and graduated from college in 1793. He then joined the Virginia state militia-where he helped to put down the Whiskey Rebellion-and later became a captain in the U.S. Army. At age 27 he became personal secretary to President Thomas Jefferson.

William Clark was born in Virginia in 1770 but moved with his family to Kentucky at age 15. At age 19, he joined the state militia and then the regular Army, where he served with Lewis and was eventually commissioned by President George Washington as a lieutenant of infantry.

In 1796, Clark returned home to manage his family's estate. Seven years later, Lewis chose him to embark on an epic excursion that would help shape America's history.

Louisiana Purchase

During the French and Indian War, France surrendered a large part of Louisiana to Spain and almost all of its remaining lands to Great Britain.

Initially, Spain's acquisition didn't have a major impact since it still allowed the United States to travel the Mississippi River and use New Orleans as a trade port. Then Napoleon Bonaparte took power in France in 1799 and wanted to regain France's former territory in the United States.

In 1802, King Charles IV of Spain returned the Louisiana Territory to France and revoked America's port access. In 1803, under the threat of war, President Jefferson and James Monroe successfully negotiated a deal with France to purchase the Louisiana Territory-which included about 827,000 square miles-for $15 million.

Even before negotiations with France were finished, Jefferson asked Congress to finance an expedition to survey the lands of the so-called Louisiana Purchase and appointed Lewis as expedition commander.

Preparations for the Lewis and Clark Expedition

Lewis knew that exploring the Louisiana Territory would be no small task and began preparations immediately. He studied medicine, botany, astronomy and zoology and scrutinized existing maps and journals of the region. He also asked his friend Clark to co-command the expedition.

Even though Clark was once Lewis' superior, Lewis was technically in charge of the trip. But for all intents and purposes, the two shared equal responsibility.

On July 5, 1804, Lewis visited the arsenal at Harper's Ferry to obtain munitions. He then rode a custom-made, 55-foot keelboat-also called "the boat" or "the barge"-down the Ohio River and joined Clark in Clarksville, Indiana. From there, Clark took the boat up the Mississippi River while Lewis continued along on horseback to collect additional supplies.

Some of the supplies collected were:

surveying instruments including compasses, quadrants, telescope, sextants and a chronometer

camping supplies including oilcloth, steel flints, tools, utensils, corn mill, mosquito netting, fishing equipment, soap and salt

clothing

weapons and ammunition

medicines and medical supplies

books on botany, geography and astronomy

maps

Lewis also collected gifts to present to Native Americans along the journey such as:

The Expedition Begins

Lewis entrusted Clark to recruit men for their "Corps of Volunteers for Northwest Discovery." Throughout the winter of 1803-1804, Clark recruited and trained men at Camp DuBois north of St. Louis, Missouri. He chose unmarried, healthy men who were good hunters and knew survival skills.

The expedition party included 45 souls including Lewis, Clark, 27 unmarried soldiers, a French-Indian interpreter, a contracted boat crew and a slave owned by Clark named York.

On May 14, 1804, Clark and the Corps joined Lewis in St. Charles, Missouri and headed upstream on the Missouri River in the keelboat and two smaller boats at a rate of about 15 miles per day. Heat, swarms of insects and strong river currents made the trip arduous at best.

To maintain discipline, Lewis and Clark ruled the Corps with an iron hand and doled out harsh punishments such as bareback lashing and hard labor for those who got out of line.

On August 20, 22-year-old Corps member Sergeant Charles Floyd died of an abdominal infection, possibly from appendicitis. He was the only member of the Corps to die on their journey.

Lewis and Clark: Native American Encounters

Most of the land Lewis and Clark surveyed was already occupied by Native Americans. In fact, the Corps encountered around 50 Native American tribes including the Shoshone, the Mandan, the Minitari, the Blackfeet, the Chinook and the Sioux.

Lewis and Clark developed a first contact protocol for meeting new tribes. They bartered goods and presented the tribe's leader with a Jefferson Indian Peace Medal, a coin engraved with the image of Thomas Jefferson on one side and an image of two hands clasped beneath a tomahawk and a peace pipe with the inscription, "Peace and Friendship" on the other.

They also told the Indians that America owned their land and offered military protection in exchange for peace.

Some Indians had met "white men" before and were friendly and open to trade. Others were wary of Lewis and Clark and their intentions and were openly hostile, though seldom violent.

In August, Lewis and Clark held peaceful Indian councils with the Odo, near present-day Council Bluffs, Iowa, and the Yankton Sioux at present-day Yankton, South Dakota.

In late September, however, they encountered the Teton Sioux, who weren't as accommodating and tried to stop the Corps' boats and demanded a toll payment. But they were no match for the military might of the Corps, and soon moved on.

Fort Mandan

In early November, the Corps came across villages of friendly Mandan and Minitari Indians near present-day Washburn, North Dakota, and decided to set up camp downriver for the winter along the banks of the Missouri River.

Within about four weeks they'd built a triangular-shaped fort called Fort Mandan, which was surrounded by 16-foot pickets and contained quarters and storage rooms.

The Corps spent the next five months at Fort Mandan hunting, forging and making canoes, ropes, leather clothing and moccasins while Clark prepared new maps. According to Clark's journal, the men were in good health overall, other than those suffering from venereal disease.

Sacagawea

While at Fort Mandan, Lewis and Clark met French-Canadian trapper Toussaint Charbonneau and hired him as an interpreter. They allowed his pregnant Shoshone Indian wife, Sacagawea, to join him on the expedition.

Sacagawea had been kidnapped by Hidatsa Indians at age 12 and then sold to Charbonneau. Lewis and Clark hoped she could help them communicate with any Shoshone they'd encounter on their journey.

On February 11, 1805, Sacagawea gave birth to a son and named him Jean Baptiste. She became an invaluable and respected asset for Lewis and Clark.

Lewis and Clark Cross the Continental Divide

On April 7, 1805, Lewis and Clark sent some of their crew and their keelboat loaded with zoological and botanical samplings, maps, reports and letters back to St. Louis while they and the rest of the Corps headed for the Pacific.

They crossed through Montana and made their way to the Continental Divide via Lemhi Pass where, with Sacagawea's help, they purchased horses from the Shoshone. While there, Sacagawea reunited with her brother Cameahwait, who hadn't seen her since she was kidnapped.

The group next headed out of Lemhi Pass and crossed the Bitterroot Mountain Range using the harrowing Lolo Trail and the help of many horses and a handful of Shoshone guides.

This leg of the journey proved to be the most difficult. Many of the party suffered from frostbite, hunger, dehydration, bad weather, freezing temperatures and exhaustion. Still, despite the merciless terrain and conditions, not a single soul was lost.

After 11 days on the Lolo Trail, the Corps stumbled upon a tribe of friendly Nez Perce Indians along Idaho's Clearwater River. The Indians took in the weary travelers, fed them and helped them regain their health.

As the Corps recovered, they built dugout canoes, then left their horses with the Nez Perce and braved the Clearwater River rapids to Snake River and then to the Columbia River. They reportedly ate dog meat along the way instead of wild game.

Fort Clatsop

A bedraggled and harried Corps finally reached the stormy Pacific Ocean in November of 1805. They'd completed their mission and had to find a place to live for the winter before heading home.

They decided to make camp near present-day Astoria, Oregon, and started building Fort Clatsop on December 10 and moved in by Christmas.

It was not an easy winter at Fort Clatsop. Everyone struggled to keep themselves and their supplies dry and fought an ongoing battle with tormenting fleas and other insects. Almost everyone was weak and sick with stomach problems (likely caused by bacterial infections), hunger or influenza-like symptoms.

Lewis and Clark Journey Home

On March 23, 1806, the Corps left Fort Clatsop for home. They retrieved their horses from the Nez Perce and waited until June for the snow to melt to cross the mountains into the Missouri River Basin.

After again traversing the rugged Bitterroot Mountain Range, Lewis and Clark split up at Lolo Pass.

Lewis' group took a shortcut north to the Great Falls of the Missouri River and explored Marias River-a tributary of the Missouri in present-day Montana-while Clark's group, including Sacagawea and her family, went south along the Yellowstone River. The two groups planned to rendezvous where the Yellowstone and Missouri met in North Dakota.

Pompey's Pillar

On July 25, 1806, Clark carved his name and the date on a large rock formation near the Yellowstone River he named Pompey's Pillar, after Sacagawea's son whose nickname was "Pompey." The site is now a national monument managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Two days later, at Marias River near present-day Cut Bank, Montana, Lewis and his group encountered eight Blackfeet warriors and were forced to kill two of them when they tried to steal weapons and horses. The location of the clash became known as Two Medicine Fight Site.

It was the only violent episode of the expedition, although soon after the Blackfeet fight, Lewis was accidentally shot in his buttocks during a hunting trip; the injury was painful and inconvenient but not fatal.

On August 12, Lewis and Clark and their crews reunited and dropped off Sacagawea and her family at the Mandan villages. They then headed down the Missouri River-with the currents moving in their favor this time-and arrived in St. Louis on September 23, where they were received with a hero's welcome.
READ MORE: Lewis and Clark Expedition Timeline
Lewis and Clark Expedition Legacy

Lewis and Clark returned to Washington, D.C., in the fall of 1806 and shared their experiences with President Jefferson.

While they had failed to identify a coveted Northwest Passage water route across the continent, they had completed their mission of surveying the Louisiana Territory from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, and did so against tremendous odds with just one death and little violence.

The Corps had traveled more than 8,000 miles, produced invaluable maps and geographical information, identified at least 120 animal specimens and 200 botanical samples and initiated peaceful relations with dozens of Native American tribes.

Both Lewis and Clark received double pay and 1,600 acres of land for their efforts. Lewis was made Governor of the Louisiana Territory and Clark was appointed Brigadier General of Militia for Louisiana Territory and a federal Indian Agent.

Clark remained well-respected and lived a successful life. Lewis, however, was not an effective governor and drank too much. He never married or had children and died in 1809 of two gunshot wounds, possibly self-inflicted. A few years later, Sacagawea died, and Clark became her children's guardian.

Despite Lewis' tragic end, his expedition with Clark remains one of America's most famous. The duo and their crew-with the aid of Sacagawea and other Native Americans-helped strengthen America's claim to the West and inspired countless other explorers and western pioneers.

Sources

Building Fort Clatsop. Discovering Lewis & Clark.

Corps of Discovery. National Park Service: Gateway Arch.

Expedition Timeline. Thomas Jefferson Foundation: The Jefferson Monticello.

Flagship: Keelboat, Barge or Boat? Discovering Lewis & Clark.

Fort Clatsop Illnesses. Discovering Lewis & Clark.

Fort Mandan Winter. Discovering Lewis & Clark.

Indian Peace Medals. Thomas Jefferson Foundation: The Jefferson Monticello.

Lemhi Valley to Fort Clatsop. Discovering Lewis & Clark.

Lolo Trail. National Park Service: Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Louisiana Purchase. Thomas Jefferson Foundation: The Jefferson Monticello.

The Journey. National Park Service: Lewis and Clark Expedition.

The Native Americans. PBS.

To Equip an Expedition. PBS.

Two Medicine Fight Site. National Park Service: Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Washington City to Fort Mandan. Discovering Lewis & Clark.

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The Lewis and Clark Expedition began in 1804, when President Thomas Jefferson tasked Meriwether Lewis with exploring lands west of the Mississippi River that comprised the Louisiana Purchase. The expedition provided new geographic, ecological and social information about previously uncharted areas of North America.

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Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery is a production of Florentine Films and WETA, Washington, D.C.

Inside the Corps
Enter the world of Lewis, Clark and the rest of the Corps of Discovery.

Native Americans
Indian tribes already knew the lands that Lewis and Clark discovered.

The Archive
Follow an expedition timeline and maps, or read the journals of the Corps.

Into the Unknown
In this interactive story, you're leading the expedition now.

Interactive Trail Map
Follow Lewis and Clark on their journey through 11 states, with journal entries, Native American history, and events to celebrate the expedition's bicentennial.

Classroom Resources
Explore the significance of the expedition using lesson plans and activities.

Living History
Listen to expert historians give their thoughts on the expedition.

A Forum with Ken Burns
Meet the director of "Lewis and Clark" and ask him your questions.

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Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery is a production of Florentine Films and WETA, Washington, D.C. Inside the Corps Enter the world of Lewis, Clark and the rest of the Corps of Discovery. Native Americans Indian tribes already knew the lands that Lewis and Clark discovered.

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Facts, information and articles about the Louisiana Purchase, an event of Westward Expansion from the Wild West

Louisiana Purchase Facts

Date

July 4, 1803

Purchased From

France

Area Covered

From The Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, and Louisiana to Montana

Purchase Price

15 million dollars

Result

Effectively Doubled The Size of The United States

Louisiana Purchase summary: The United States bought 828,000 square miles of land from France in 1803. The French controlled this region from 1699 until 1762 when it became Spanish property because France gave it to Spain as a present, since they were allies. But under Napoleon Bonaparte, France revived the aspirations to build an empire in North America so the territory was taken back in 1800. However, those big plans were not meant to be because Napoleon needed to concentrate on preparations for war with the British Empire and so the land was sold to the United States. The price was 15 million dollars.

The purchased territory included the whole of today's Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska, parts of Minnesota and Louisiana west of Mississippi River, including New Orleans, big parts of North and northeastern New Mexico, South Dakota, northern Texas, some parts of Wyoming, Montana, and Colorado as well as portions of Canadian provinces Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Thomas Jefferson was the American president at the time of the Louisiana Purchase. The United States initially wanted to buy only New Orleans and the land around it. The purchase met with the strong opposition in the States on account of being unconstitutional. Those accusations were accurate, at least to some extent. President Jefferson couldn't deny that the Constitution of the United States did not provide for acquiring new territories but still he decided to proceed with the purchase since the removal of French presence in the region was such an important issue.

Louisiana Purchase Map

Map of the Louisiana Territory included in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803

Painting of Louisiana Purchase by Thure de Thulstrup Copy of last page of French Copy of Louisiana Purchase

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July 4, 1803 France From The Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, and Louisiana to Montana 15 million dollars Effectively Doubled The Size of The United States Louisiana Purchase summary: The United States bought 828,000 square miles of land from France in 1803.

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For a mere $15 million, Thomas Jefferson doubled the size of the United States, buying 800,000 square miles from the French that stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains.

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For a mere $15 million, Thomas Jefferson doubled the size of the United States, buying 800,000 square miles from the French that stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains.

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With stunning re-enactments, evocative animation and the incisive commentary of key experts the PBS documentary, The War of 1812 presents the conflict that forged the destiny of a continent.