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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Von Ether" data-source="post: 8058784" data-attributes="member: 15582">That is a conflation of four things:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The westward movement of settlers (not trade) of the mid-1800s. (which was really only in earnest for about 50 years.*) Most of those people settled next to water.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The long history of exploration (again, not trade) of the New World for centuries before that (starting in the New World in the 1500s and in North America around the 1600s) and was more about discovering a new river (and a potential places for trading outposts that you build next to rivers and bodies of water) and then crossing it to find the next river.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Something else most fantasy worlds don't have - railroads (which is all about trade) but also a technology that is post faux-Middle Ages. And rail line construction is not a fan of mountains or rivers (unless that river destination is part of a port city.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The symbiotic relationship railroads had with 19th Century settlement that pushed both out west. * (hence the earnest part. ** )</li> </ul>Before railroads went transcontinental in the 1860s, all of the cities that were big for their time were port cities, either by river or sea. Chicago (Grand Lakes and Lawrence River), New York (The Hudson), St. Louis (Missouri River), New Orleans (Mississippi), Kansas City (Missouri River), Minneapolis–Saint Paul (Mississippi, Minnesota and St. Croix Rivers). And while barges  and riverboats are not the trade superstars they once were, they are still in use today.After the transcontinental railroads and other fortunes, some of those cities got even bigger while others are now smaller, never mind that many other towns and cities that exist solely because of the railroad.The earliest rail lines were even built to follow the rivers and for a time trade went the way of riverboats going north/south with the rail shortening time on the east/west leg of the journey.You could even probably say that the railroads eventually became the new rivers for a land that went counter to the natural flow of rivers. (and also it was impossible to dig a transcontinental canal.)Makes you wonder if Manifest Destiny had struck it out North or South, how thing would have been.It's amazing how history textbooks can take even the exciting things (exploration and travel), at the cost of cutting out the "dull" stuff (trade) and still make so boring.** The state of Oklahoma is barely 113 years old, which means during the 1980s there were people living that were older than the state. Whereas I'm just imparting how much more recent things can be than you think.</blockquote>

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