<P> The Timeline of U.S.A Railway History depends upon the definition of a railway, as follows: A means of conveyance of passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, also known as tracks . </P> <Ul> <Li> 1795 - 96 & 1799 - 1804 or' 05--In 1795, Charles Bullfinch, the architect of Boston's famed State House first employed a temporary funicular railway with specially designed dumper cars to decapitate' the Tremont's' Beacon Hill summit and begin the decades long land reclamation projects which created most of the real estate in Boston's lower elevations of today from broad mud flats, such as South Boston, Eastern parts of Dorchester, much of the shorelines of the entire Charles River basin on both the left and right banks and Brighton from mud flats, and most famously and tellingly especially the Back Bay . </Li> <Li> 1815 - 1820s One interpretation of historical documents indicates the same equipment was used for a longer, more ambitious period to level and effectively remove' The Tremont', Copely, Cope's, and Beacon Hills again into what became Boston's Back Bay. (1) These moves were far from completing the project, photos in the 1850s and recent scholarship show the majority of the Back Bay was still tidewater . </Li> </Ul>

When were railroads first built in the us