DeWitt Clinton (locomotive)

The DeWitt Clinton is an early American steam locomotive built in 1831 for the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, named after the New York governor who had championed the Erie Canal, and is remembered as one of the first steam locomotives to haul a passenger train in New York State, on a line connecting Albany and Schenectady. Built with a small boiler and open, bench-style passenger cars adapted directly from stagecoach designs of the period, complete with exposed seating that left early passengers coated in smoke and cinders, the DeWitt Clinton's inaugural run became one of the most frequently retold and illustrated episodes in early American railroad history. The original locomotive did not survive, but a widely displayed replica was built decades later for historical exhibitions.