Perhaps the first men traveled by hollowed logs down stream.

Then possibly the idea of a sail was conceived.

Early in the story of the United States men made commercial journeys from the head of the Ohio to the mouth of the Mississippi by flatboats, and came back by keelboats.

The pole, the cordelle, the paddle, and the sail, in turn helped them to navigate the great streams which led out into the West.

And presently there was to come that tremendous upheaval wrought by the advent of the iron trails which, scorning alike waterways and mountain ranges, flung themselves almost directly westward across the continent.
The iron trails, crossing the northern range soon after the Civil War, brought a market to the cattle country.