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Race Up the Potomac: An Archaeologist's Field Notes worksheet preview

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Race Up the Potomac: An Archaeologist's Field Notes

Grade 8 geography: an archaeologist's field notes, a described map and a route table compare the C&O Canal and the B&O Railroad in the race to link the coast and the Ohio Valley.

Grade 8Social StudiesInteractive · Printable

Aligned toGEO.8.1

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What’s included

  • Single worksheet
  • Auto-graded online
  • 1 C3 Framework standard
  • Printable answer key
  • 11 questions
  • Classroom-ready

Details

Format
Interactive · Printable
Grade
Grade 8
Subject
Social Studies
Question types
Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Matching, Circle the answer, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

  • Students use a described map and route data to explain how a river valley and mountains shaped routes west.
  • Students explain how canals, railroads and the telegraph linked the East Coast with the Ohio Valley.
  • Students use archaeological finds and written records as evidence about transportation in the 1800s.

How to use

Have students sketch the six places from the map description in a line from east to west, then read the notes and answer on their own.

Curriculum

C3 Framework standard covered

GEO.8.1

Use maps and data to explain how canals, railroads and the telegraph connected the regions of the United States.

Preview

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Race Up the Potomac: An Archaeologist's Field Notes

Follow an archaeologist along the C&O Canal and the B&O Railroad to see how geography shaped the race to the Ohio River.

The map and the field notes

Read the described map and the field notes. Dr. Quinn and her notebook are invented; the places, routes, dates and kinds of finds are real. Then answer the questions.

Described map: from the Chesapeake to the Ohio
1. Baltimore, Maryland, a port on Chesapeake Bay, where the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad begins.
2. Georgetown, in Washington, D.C., on the Potomac River, about 40 miles southwest of Baltimore, where the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal begins.
3. Point of Rocks, Maryland, up the Potomac to the northwest, where cliffs press close to the river.
4. Harpers Ferry, in today's West Virginia, where the Shenandoah River joins the Potomac and the river cuts a gap through the Blue Ridge.
5. Cumberland, Maryland, far up the Potomac, at the foot of the Allegheny Mountains.
6. Wheeling, in today's West Virginia, on the Ohio River, northwest of Cumberland across the mountains.

Field Notes of Dr. Amara Quinn, Archaeologist

1Day 1, Georgetown. I began my survey at the first locks of the C&O Canal. On July 4, 1828, President John Quincy Adams turned the first shovel of dirt for this canal. That same day in Baltimore, the B&O Railroad laid its first stone. Both companies raced for the same prize: the trade of the farms and towns of the Ohio Valley, which then floated mostly down the rivers to New Orleans.

2Day 3, Point of Rocks. Here the cliffs come right down to the river, leaving a strip of flat ground barely wide enough for one route. Both companies wanted it, and they fought in court until a ruling for the canal in 1832; later they agreed to share the strip. The towpath and the tracks still run side by side. In the soil beside the tracks we found a glass telegraph insulator, likely from a line strung after 1850. The first telegraph line, from Washington to Baltimore in 1844, also ran beside B&O tracks.

3Day 5, near Harpers Ferry. The Potomac and the Shenandoah meet here and cut a gap through the Blue Ridge, so both routes follow the river through it. The B&O reached Harpers Ferry in 1834 and soon built a bridge across the Potomac. Beside a stone lockhouse upstream, my crew dug up a worn mule shoe and pieces of blue-and-white dishes made in England. The lockkeeper's family lived here and opened the lock gates for passing boats at all hours.

4Day 9, Cumberland. The B&O's tracks reached Cumberland, about 178 miles from Baltimore, in 1842. The canal arrived in 1850. Its 184 miles needed 74 locks to lift boats about 600 feet. The plan to dig on over the mountains to the Ohio River was given up: the slopes ahead were far steeper, and the company's money had run out. Instead, the canal carried coal from mines in the nearby mountains, and lumps of coal turn up in almost every test pit along the towpath. Cumberland was also the start of the National Road, a wagon road finished to Wheeling in 1818.

5Day 12, Wheeling. West of Cumberland, the B&O climbed the Allegheny Mountains on steep grades, through tunnels and over high bridges. Its first trains reached Wheeling, on the Ohio River, in January 1853. Flour, pork and other goods from Ohio Valley farms could now roll east to Baltimore in every season, and Baltimore's goods came west. The canal kept working until floods ended its business in 1924; today its towpath is a trail in a national park.

1.
Based on the map and the Day 5 notes, why did both the canal and the railroad follow the Potomac River west?
  • A. The river was deep enough for ocean ships to sail to Cumberland.
  • B. Land beside the river was the cheapest land in Maryland.
  • C. The government told both companies to build on the same side.
  • D. The river valley gave a gentle path through gaps in the ridges.

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