Horses, mules, and oxen carried the overland travelers, and none yet dreamed of being carried on the land by steam.
Back East, however, and across the sea in England, there were a few dreamers.

Railways of wooden rails, sometimes covered with iron, on which wagons were drawn by horses, were common in Great Britain; some were in use very early in America.

And on these railways, or tramways, men were now experimenting with steam, trying to harness it to do the work of horses.

In England, Trevithick, Blenkinsop, Ericsson, Stephenson, and others; in America, John Stevens, now an old man but persistent in his plans as ever and with able sons to help him, had erected a circular railway at Hoboken as early as 1826, on which he ran a locomotive at the rate of twelve miles an hour.

Then in 1828 Horatio Allen, of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, went over to England and brought back with him the Stourbridge Lion.