After the development of a steam-powered locomotive in the mid-1800s, the laying of new rail lines grew quickly. national road construction came to a halt. steamship travel sharply declined in popularity. travel by steamboat was concentrated in canals.

The right answer is the laying of new rail lines grew quickly.

The first great wave of railroad building occurred in the 1850s, the most spectacular growth took place during the quarter century after the Civil War. From about thirty-five thousand miles of track in 1865, the national rail network grew to nearly two hundred thousand miles by 1897. The transcontinental rail lines led the way, and they helped populate the Great Plains and the Far West. Railroads were America’s first big business, the first magnet for the great financial market known as Wall Street in New York City, and the first industry to develop a large-scale management bureaucracy.

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