to the route by which it now enters the city. The Cincinnati & Baltimore Railway was leased by the Marietta & Cincinnati Railroad Company, as reorganized.

The great mistake which was made by the original company in leaving the Valley of the Hocking River six miles east of Athens, and adopting a line thence to Scott's Landing, very expensive and difficult to construct, and expensive and dangerous to operate, was corrected at last by the building of the Baltimore Short Line Railway from the point, six miles east of Athens, at which the old road left the bottom lands of the Hocking Valley, to Belpre, a distance of thirty miles.

The Baltimore Short Line Railroad Company was organized in 1870, with authority to build a railroad from Athens to Belpre. Its line extended from the Marietta & Cincinnati Railroad, near Warren's, to Belpre, the eastern terminus of the Marietta & Cincinnati Railroad. The building of the road was begun in September, 1872, and November 15, 1874, the Marietta & Cincinnati Railroad Company, having acquired a lease of the new route transferred to it all its through trains, and operated it as part of its main line.

CONNECTION WITH BALTIMORE & OHIO

The bridge built over the Ohio River, at Parkersburgh, by which a connection between the Marietta & Cincinnati and the Baltimore & Ohio railroads was perfected, was commenced in 1865, under the contract by which the two companies were to jointly build and own it; but the inability of the Marietta & Cincinnati Company to provide its share of the money required for the purpose, put upon the Baltimore & Ohio Company the whole work of construction. It was opened for the passage of trains in January, 1871, and at once relieved the business of the line from the delay and greater expense which had attended the transfer of passengers by steamboat, and of freight by barges.

GENERAL REPAIR SHOPS AT CHILLICOTHE

The shops of the company, for building and repairing cars, were located at Zaleski, Vinton County, those for repair of locomotive engines and for the general repairs connected with the road, are established at Chillicothe. At each of these places the grounds owned by the company were extensive.

The Marietta & Cincinnati Railroad was never a paying investment for its stockholders. The original company passed through bankruptcy, in 1858, with a then admitted loss to its stockholders and creditors of more than $4,000,000. The reorganized company

started out August 15, 1860, with a stock capital of about $8,000,000, and, except the obligation to the stockholders, owning only the $200,000 paid by the trustees for the road at the judicial sale.

The only cash dividend ever paid on its stock was in 1864, when a dividend of 3 per cent, on the first preferred stock was declared and paid, amounting to $162,478.50. At the close of 1868, about eight years from the reorganization, the liabilities of the company, other than stock, had increased to about $6,000,000, and nearly $7,000,000 of additional stock had been issued. On December 31, 1876, the stock issued had been somewhat reduced from what it had been at the close of 1868, and was then $14,000,000, but the other debts of the company had risen to nearly $18,000,000.

RECEIVER FOR REORGANIZED COMPANY

In June, 1877, the trustees named in the fourth mortgage given by the company on its road, applied to the Court of Common Pleas of Ross County for the appointment of a receiver to take charge, under the direction of the court, of the road and other property of the company, and to apply the receipts therefrom for the benefit of its creditors until sale would be made of the same under foreclosure of mortgages. The court granted the application, and appointed John King, Jr., former president of the company, as receiver.

Forty years ago the old Marietta & Cincinnati Railroad (long since a section of the Baltimore & Ohio Southwestern), passed through Ross County for nearly forty miles. It entered from the west at the crossing of Paint Creek, near Greenfield, Highland County, runs almost eastwardly through Buckskin, Concord and Union townships (with Lyndon and Roxabell as stations), then verged toward the southeast, passing through Chillicothe and Scioto Township into Liberty Township, and cut off the northeast corner of Jefferson Township in its course to Jackson County.

THE DAYTON & SOUTHEASTERN RAILROAD

As its name indicates, this road left the City of Dayton, in Montgomery County, running in a southeasterly direction through the counties of Montgomery, Greene, Fayette and Ross, penetrating the coal bearing regions of Jackson County at Wellston, eight miles north of the county seat of that county. It was 112 miles long, and passed through some of the finest agricultural portions of the state for about ninety miles of its length, and then abruptly plunged into the mountainous mineral region of Southeastern Ohio, where iron and coal were most abundant. The scheme of its building

originated first in the mind of Samuel N. Yeoman, an active, enterprising merchant of Washington Court House, Fayette County, Ohio, who, in conjunction with other prominent citizens of his county and the adjoining County of Greene, succeeded, in the year 1875, in procuring a charter, opening stock books, securing a stock subscription in the neighborhood of $800,000, and effecting a permanent organization. Yeoman was elected president, with a board of directors consisting of D. E. Mead, Daniel Keifer, T. A. Segler, W. P. Callihan, and others of Montgomery County; M. C. Allison, A. Hivling, and A. J. Christopher, Greene County; John L. Persinger and Milton Hegler, Fayette County; Thomas Woodrow, S. F. McCoy, and D. C. Anderson, of Ross, and H. F. Austin, of Jackson, with Jacob Blickensderfer as chief engineer and James O. Arnold as secretary. With this organization the work of construction was commenced, and for several months pushed with vigor, until the summer of 1876, when the financial panic had rendered the collection of stock subscriptions next to an impossibility.

During the autumn and winter of that year work was entirely suspended. Meanwhile Yeoman was defeated for the presidency by D. E. Mead, of Dayton, who was a man of wealth and business. reputation. He resorted to every scheme possible to further the progress of construction, but was compelled to write utter failure on all his efforts, and in August, 1878, the road by this time becoming somewhat involved in debt, he was directed by the Superior Court of Montgomery County to hand over the property and control of the road to one J. E. Gimperling, as receiver, and it remained for him to lead it, by slow degrees, into the path of prosperity. When, in 1876, it became apparent that the stock subscriptions would not produce a sufficient sum in the requisite time to meet the liabilities incurred by the company in construction, it was decided by the board of directors to put the road under mortgage and issue bonds to the amount of $5,000 per mile, and thereby produce the necessary funds to complete its construction and equipment. Consequently this was done, but after months of delay and futile efforts, it was found that there was no market for them at home or abroad. At various times during the years 1875-76-77, these bonds were in large sums delivered to the contractors in payment for construction, and other purposes, until, at the time J. E. Gimperling assumed control of the road less than $200,000 of these securities remained in the possession of the company.

Up to this period the earnings of the road (seventy miles of which was then completed and in operation) were insufficient to pay expenses. In this half-finished condition, without money, credit or business, J. E. Gimperling, on the 8th of August, 1878, took charge of the road, with the determined purpose to reorganize

its force and methods of operation, and by economy and wise management, so increase its business, and consequently its credit, as to finally create a market for its bonds among home capitalists. With that inflexible purpose, he pursued the work until, at the end of ten months (June, 1879) he had inspired such confidence in the success of the road, properly managed, that capitalists at home, in less than twenty days after he had offered the remainder of the bonds for sale, purchased the last dollar, and clamored for more. Thus provided with the means, he set to work to complete the construction of the remaining forty miles of road to the coal fields, and before the snows of the succeeding winter fell, the road was completed, and large quantities of coal were shipped over its line. It was preeminently a coal road and passed through Frankfort and Chillicothe, touched the southern part of Chillicothe, and ran generally east to the canal and then southeast. The line has long been a section of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton road.

SCIOTO AND HOCKING VALLEY RAILROAD

In the summer and fall of 1848 the building of a railroad down the Valley of the Scioto River took substantial form, and on February 20, 1849, a charter was obtained from the Legislature for the Scioto and Hocking Valley Railroad, but nearly thirty years was to pass before Scioto County, or the lower region of the valley, was to be benefited by that and more substantial enterprises. The proposed route was from Newark, Licking County, to Portsmouth, via Lancaster, Chillicothe and Piketon, and under the terms of the charter work was to commence in August, 1849. But although Portsmouth wanted the road and subscribed $128,000 for it, the country districts did not, and managed to defeat the enterprise within Scioto County by seven votes, while Pike County cast a majority of 280 against it.

In July, 1850, the company was organized, and in the following January the contract was let for building the first twenty miles of railroad between Hales Creek and Jackson. The first ties in Scioto County were laid in July, 1852; in September, the first locomotive appeared at Portsmouth and by the middle of November the track had been laid fourteen miles out. Trains were running regularly between Jackson and Portsmouth in October, 1853, and in the following year to Hamden Junction, where it connected with the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad.

THE IRON RAILROAD

The Iron Railroad was chartered March 17, 1849, with a capital of $500,000, its proposed line being from a point in Upper Town

ship, Lawrence County, on the Ohio River, to the southern line of Jackson County, with power to extend it north to Hamden Junction, where it was to connect with the Marietta and Cincinnati. On April 9, 1849, the Ohio River terminus was fixed and Ironton founded. The Iron Railroad was commenced in 1849, James O. Willard being the first president. This road was built by the owners of the charcoal furnaces, located in the northern part of Lawrence County, for the purpose of transporting their pig iron to the Ohio River and getting their supplies from the river to the furnaces. It was organized and built by the same men who laid out the Town of Ironton, and as it was deemed certain that the town enterprise would be profitable and that the railroad enterprise would not, each stockholder in the town company was required to take twice as much stock in the railroad company as he was allowed to take in the town company. Their anticipations proved to be correct; the town company paid handsomely, but the railroad company only made two cash dividends in thirty years. The Iron Railroad was more expensive than had been anticipated and took longer to construct on account of a long tunnel between the waters of Storm Creek and Pine Creek. This tunnel was completed in December, 1851. The road was then extended to Centre Station in Upper Township, and there it stopped on account of another long tunnel. But the projectors had accomplished their prime object of providing the means of getting their iron to the Ohio River, which was their only means of access to the principal markets of the country. When the Dayton and Southeastern Narrow Gauge System was projected from Dayton to Ironton, the Iron Railroad was purchased and incorporated with that system. The Iron Railroad was a standard gauge road, but the Dayton & Southeastern laid a third rail on the ties of the Iron Railroad and used that road from Dean Station into Ironton. Later the Iron Railroad was again operated as a separate system and then sold again and became a part of the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton Railway, to which it still belongs.

BALTIMORE AND OHIO SOUTHWESTERN

The original Scioto and Hocking Valley Railroad never got beyond Hamden Junction, to which it was completed in 1854. The enterprise then collapsed, and the road-bed and right-of-way, which had already been heavily mortgaged, were sold under foreclosure and forfeited to the land owners. The most of the stock was held by persons living along the line of the contemplated road.

The portion of the road completed south and southwest from Hamden Junction to Portsmouth went into the hands of a receiver