Read more about the article The Erie Canal: A New York Venture Helped Shape North Carolina

The Erie Canal: A New York Venture Helped Shape North Carolina

The Erie Canal across New York State was a marvel. The concept was visionary. The business plan was revolutionary. The engineering was inspiring. The Erie Canal forever changed New York State and the Midwest. It also taught far-away North Carolina lessons that helped the "Rip Van Winkle State" rouse itself from crippling economic stagnation.

Read more about the article The Horse Trolley: A Slow Walk Toward a New City

The Horse Trolley: A Slow Walk Toward a New City

From today's perspective, nothing in the history of transportation seems more benign than the horse trolley, a phenomenon that flourished only briefly in the last decades of the 1800s. But these crude people-movers were the vanguard of a transportation revolution that would fundamentally change our concept of the city.