In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt addressed the American Historical Association to call for American history to be written as compelling stories of literary quality. Editor Allen Johnson of Yale University responded by publishing the Chronicles of America series: 50 succinct volumes on regional and thematic American history. These books, intended for secondary schools and college students, are expository works of American history composed by competent historians in the 1920's, well before the special pleading and upending of social norms typical of histories after 1970. This series is focused on the mainstream of American political life and leadership from its initial volumes on Native Americans and European colonists to its final volumes on Woodrow Wilson, Canada, and the Hispanic Republics to our South.

Volume #21 of the series, The Paths of Inland Commerce, concerns the trails, highways, and canals in the early republic. The visionary investors in waterways and pathways to the great west facilitated the movement of commodities and settlers until the revolutionary invention of the steamboat came to dominate transportation and cause the rapid growth of the river towns down the Ohio to the Mississippi and New Orleans. This dramatic history of pioneers and cargoes chronicles the dynamic changes between the colonial period and the age of the railroad. The prolific Archer Hulbert authored a sixteen volume series on trails, canals, roads, and rail in early America titled The Historic Highways of America between 1902 and 1905.

This work has been formatted and reprinted for Tall Men Books. It is not a facsimile reprint.