Total Annual Mileage and Increase.—On [page 429] is given a chart which, beginning with the 23 miles of 1830 and ending with the 156,082 miles of 1888, delineates our ever-increasing total mileage. It also portrays the fluctuations in the number of miles built annually. This latter study is the more interesting, especially during the last twenty-five years, which cover the periods of extreme activity.
Mileage Compared with Area.—The shaded map on the same page pictures the railway mileage of each State as compared with its total area. The eleven States bearing the deepest shade (5) are those having the larger proportions of mileage to area. Of these, New Jersey stands first, having almost exactly one-fourth of a mile of railroad for each square mile of land. The proportion of total area occupied by this mileage is measured to the eye by the accompanying diagram.
Mileage to Area in New Jersey.
The entire square stands for one square mile of land, and the space at the upper left-hand corner stands for that part of the square mile which the railroad occupies, counting from fence to fence on each side of the road. This comparison is made on the basis of one hundred feet for the "right of way" (the width allowed in government grants), and is useful in connection with the study of the historical maps, especially those of 1880 and 1889, on which the area of some of the States seems to be nearly all taken up with roads, owing to the small scale of the maps. Iowa has the smallest proportion of any in Group 5. The figures show her proportion to be a little over one-seventh of a mile of road to one square mile of area. (Nevada has the smallest proportion of all the States and Territories, viz., a trifle over 1/117 of a mile of line to one square mile.)
That part of the map bearing the deepest shade shows at a glance that an unbroken belt, averaging some two hundred miles wide, stretching from Cape Cod to beyond the Mississippi River, is that part of the country best supplied with railways.
The lighter shades grouped on either side of this belt show how the mileage grades away north and south.
GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION OF RAILWAYS.
On pages 430 to 433 is a series of historical maps showing the location of railway lines at each census-year from 1830 to 1880, and in 1889. Charts comparing and ranking the mileage by States accompany the maps of 1870, 1880, and 1889. These maps and charts give a better idea of the location and extent of progress than could be given by a dozen pages of description and a hundred columns of figures.