Three-fourths of Baltimore’s citizens gathered to celebrate the occasion with a four-hour parade. That green metal box is the exact location where the first stone, now kept in the B&O Railroad Museum on Pratt Street for safekeeping, was laid. On July 4, 1828, Charles Carroll, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, put the first shovel into the dirt here for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The first railroad bridge built in this country. See that? The 312-foot-long stone arch over the Gwynns Falls? That’s the Carrollton Viaduct. That rail line carried the first commercial passenger and freight trains in the United States. Those tracks you’ve just walked down? Turn around.
The history born on this spot and marked by that green metal totem is anything but. Next to it, there’s a telephone pole tagged with graffiti, backed up by a stretch of abandoned boxcars and more graffiti, and behind that, a salvage yard. Amble on another five minutes, and suddenly what you’re looking for will pop into view on the right-a kelly-green, bellybutton-high metal box tagged with graffiti. You’ll pass a warehouse and a rusted steel edifice and start thinking you’ve gone too far and missed it. After a quarter of a mile, other tracks will merge into your path. If you go in the afternoon, follow the sun and tracks and start walking west. You have to scramble down the hillside beneath the overpass, through woods and thicket-admittedly a surreal setting in West Baltimore-until you reach the clearing and train tracks. After crossing the overpass, park at the City Farm-Carroll Park community garden.
Take Lombard Street from downtown, continue past Hollins Market until you reach Monroe, and then make a left.
It’s not on any street map, but I can tell you how to find it. The birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution is tricky to get to.
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