Every railroad in America traces its family tree to a single mile of track in Baltimore. At Mount Clare, the B&O Railroad Museum preserves the first mile of commercial railroad track laid in the United States — the line that opened in 1830 toward Ellicott’s Mills and proved that steam could conquer distance.
The star of the story is Tom Thumb, the little locomotive built by inventor Peter Cooper in 1830 — the first American-built steam engine to pull passengers. Its famous impromptu race against a horse-drawn rail car ended with a slipped drive belt and a victory for the horse, but everyone watching understood the future had arrived anyway. A working replica and the museum’s extraordinary roundhouse collection of 19th-century locomotives tell the rest of the story.
Start this visit in the 1884 Roundhouse, then walk the first mile itself: few museum experiences in America let you stand exactly where an industry was born.
The B&O Railroad Museum is at 901 West Pratt Street. Exhibits and hours at borail.org.
