Hotel Industry

The third generation of hotels was catalyzed by the rapid growth of the American railroad system in the decades after 1840, a development that freed long-distance travel from the limitations of the river system and recon-figured the nation's transportation network along an east-west axis. Hotels continued to multiply in the East and also proliferated along the advancing frontier of settlement, rising over the prairies and plains in the 1840s and 1850s and appearing in the mountain West in the 1860s and 1870s.

• The third generation of hotels was catalyzed by the rapid growth of the American railroad system in the decades after 1840, a development that freed long-distance travel from the limitations of the river system and recon-figured the nation's transportation network along an east-west axis. Hotels continued to multiply in the East and also proliferated along the advancing frontier of settlement, rising over the prairies and plains in the 1840s and 1850s and appearing in the mountain West in the 1860s and 1870s.
• The westward advance of hotel construction soon linked up with a counterpart that had originated with Anglo settlement of the Pacific coast and extended eastward. By the time of the centennial.