Stephen Long, 1809 Railroad Engineer

STEPHEN LONG was born in Hopkinton, N. H., on December 30, 1784. After graduating from Dartmouth in 1809, he taught school and then in 1814 entered the Army as a second lieutenant of engineers'. For two years he was assistant professor of mathematics at West Point before transferring to the topographical engineers with the brevet rank of major.

He spent the next ten years in command of various expeditions into the unsettled western reaches of United States territory. The most important of these expeditions was sent in 1819 to explore the Rocky Mountains. They pushed west along the Platte and South Platte rivers and finally reached the Rockies in July 1820. After discovering the peak that bears his name, Long led his party south toward Colorado Springs. They returned east by way of the Arkansas River and its tributaries, learning much about the largely unexplored southwest.

The year 1827 marked his turn to railroad engineering. He was assigned by the War Department to act as consulting engineer for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. With an associate he laid out the route for the B & O and served as president of its board of engineers until 1830. He became an authority in the new field of railroad engineering and published two studies of his theory of grades and curvatures with accompanying tables that eliminated the need for all computations in this field.

In 1834 he undertook for the Georgia General Assembly a preliminary survey for possible railway routes between Tennessee and Georgia. After the Assembly created the Western and Atlantic Railroad in 1836, Long was appointed chief engineer with responsibility for surveying and building the new line. It was to run from the Tennessee River to the Chattahoochee and extend across the latter "to a point not exceeding eight miles." This terminal was to be the connection for branch lines extending out to various Georgia towns. Long studied the Chattahoochee, selected the best crossing, and recommended that the terminal of the line be established eight miles southeast of that point. On July 4, 1837, the first stake was driven to mark the beginning of the railroad line at the terminal site selected by Long. The community that grew up around that point became Atlanta.

He continued as chief engineer with the Western and Atlantic until 1840. After that he often served as consulting engineer to a number of railroad companies. In 1860 he was assigned to duties relating to the improvement of navigation at the mouth of the Mississippi River. At the outbreak of the Civil War hostilities, he was recalled to Washington and advanced to the rank of colonel and chief of the topographical engineering corps. But poor health forced him to retire in 1863, and he died September 4, 1864. He married Martha Hodgkins in 1819. They had a daughter and four sons, one of whom, Henry Clay Long, was a member of the Class of 1841.

A painting representing the historicdriving of the railroad terminus stakeat the direction of Stephen H. Long.