Isolated from East Coast markets by the rugged Allegheny Mountains, Pittsburgh business people were always on the lookout for new ways to move goods and people.

In its final edition of 1834, the Daily Pittsburgh Gazette printed a lengthy report on a new technology that, its inventors claimed, could reduce shipping costs dramatically.

A "Wooden Track Road" could slash the cost of transporting 100 pounds of goods from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia from $2.50 -- equivalent to about $40 in modern currency -- to 84 cents [$13.50 today], according to the Dec. 31 edition of the newspaper.

"A double Track road can be made, under favorable circumstances, for about one third the cost of a McAddamized [sic] road -- one sixth the cost of a iron rail road and only one twelfth of a canal," according to the story, which appeared under the headline "CHEAP RAIL ROAD."

A "McAdam," or macadam, road was named for John Loudon McAdam, a Scottish engineer, who refined the idea of using two layers of different-sized stone to build less expensive but still durable roads. An "iron rail road" referred to the familiar raised tracks on which railroad cars, drawn by horses or locomotives, could run.

The track road proposed even cheaper construction, designed to make use of readily available wood, one of the most abundant raw materials around Pittsburgh.

An illustration accompanying the story showed 8-inch-wide wooden boards laid across wooden ties. Narrower wooden "ledges or side guides" were nailed to the outside edges of the boards. They were slightly shorter than the track boards, creating gaps to allow storm water to run off, but they still would help to keep "every description of wheeled carriages" from running off the smooth wooden rails.

The technology appeared similar to the "plank roads" constructed in Allegheny County in the 19th century, but it required much less timber.

"It is believed, by good judges, that a team of common horses can draw, on a track road, double the weight and one half [the distance] further in a day, than the same team could do, on one of our best common turnpikes," the story claimed. By making use of nearby trees, construction costs could be kept to $1,000 to $2,500 per mile, according to the article. Those numbers are equivalent to just $16,000 to $40,000 in modern currency.

While the Gazette article names John S. Williams, of Ohio, and John Hartman, of Virginia, as co-inventors of the track-road technology, an earlier article in a professional periodical indicates they were more competitors than collaborators. Williams claimed he developed the basics of the wooden rail technology on his own in 1831.

"An account of [my] invention entered into many of the newspapers of the day," he wrote in a letter printed in 1833 in the "American Railroad Journal and Advocate for Internal Improvements."

A year earlier, the Ohio Legislature had authorized the Cincinnati, Columbus and Wooster Turnpike Co. to construct a road using Williams' plan of "timber laid lengthwise." By 1838, the company had completed 28 miles of highway from Cincinnati to Goshen, Ohio, according to a history of 19th century Ohio turnpikes by amateur historian Dallas Bogan.

Contacted at his home in Tennessee, Mr. Bogan said there was no evidence that the Cincinnati-to-Goshen project had used wooden "track road" technology. It is not clear if any "track road" was ever built to serve Pittsburgh.

The big breakthrough in ground transportation for Pittsburgh had to wait until 1854, when the Pennsylvania Railroad completed Horseshoe Curve and the Summit Tunnel through the Alleghenies. Those two engineering feats finally opened the way for an all-rail route across the state.

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