Willis Creek Bridge
on the C & P Railroad

Library of Congress,
Historic American Engineering Record

The Western Maryland coal and iron industries created the Cumberland & Pennsylvania Railroad, which rose and fell on the fortunes of those industries. When the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) arrived in Cumberland, Maryland, from Baltimore in 1842, it quickly opened the almost-dormant coal fields west and southwest of the city to Eastern and export markets. And in 1850, the struggling Chesapeake & Ohio Canal finally finished its waterway to Washington, adding another low-cost outlet for Cumberland-region coal. As early as the mid-1840s, mining began rapidly expanding, as did the nascent iron furnace and rolling mill at Mt. Savage. (The Mt. Savage mill, incidentally, produced the first American rolled railroad rail in 1844.)

But the B&O itself chose not to directly serve the mines and mills, most of which lay miles from its tracks. In 1846, the Mt. Savage company built its own nine-mile private railroad between Mt. Savage and Cumberland, passing through the Wills Creek Narrows. Following its lead, the Maryland Mining Co. also built a nine-mile line from its Eckhart mines downhill to join the Mt. Savage railroad at Wills Creek. The ironworks changed hands in 1848, and in 1850 incorporated its private line as the Cumberland & Pennsylvania Railroad.

Railroad building then accelerated rapidly. On its way across the Alleghenies to Wheeling, the B&O arrived in Piedmont, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1851, putting the Georges Creek coal seams within reach of the railroad. Two railroads were pushed into the valley to haul out the coal: From the north, the Cumberland & Pennsylvania built a steep line up the mountain to Frostburg (which it tunneled under) and then down Georges Creek, finished in 1857. At the Piedmont end, the Georges Creek Railroad reached Lonaconing in 1853 and continued north to meet the C&P line three years later.

The then-new Consolidation Coal Co., soon to dominate Western Maryland mining, inherited the Cumberland & Pennsylvania (C&P) in 1860, and in 1863 added the Georges Creek Railroad to its empire. That was followed in 1870 by the Cumberland Coal and Iron Co., which owned the still-private Eckhard branch. The resulting “new” C&P now covered the entire mining region, starting in Cumberland, heading west to Mt. Savage, then looping south through Frostburg and down Georges Creek to Piedmont. Part of its line west from Cumberland became a genuine main line in 1871, when the B&O used it to pass through the Narrows on its way to Pittsburgh--a section that still remains highly active today.

Mining boomed through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but then began a long decline. By the early 1940s, the once-omnipotent Consolidation Coal Co. was in financial trouble and decided to sell its railroad. The Western Maryland Railway took the bait and in 1944 absorbed the Cumberland & Pennsylvania. The years after saw a steady abandonment as the local coal business gyrated down and up. By the end of the twentieth century, the only vestiges of the C&P lay in the Georges Creek valley, served by the Western Maryland’s successor, CSX Transportation.

Mellander, Deane E. Rails to the Big Vein: The Short Lines of Allegany County, Maryland. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Chapter, National Railway Historical Society, 1981.

Mellander, Deane E. Cumberland and Pennsylvania Railroad. Newton, N.J.: Carstens Publications, Inc., 1981.