Research Paper

The Journal of Transport History

2020, Vol. 41(1) 70–88
The arrival of wagons to ! The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
the Andes: Construction sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0022526620906957
of the Cambao Wagon journals.sagepub.com/home/jth

Road in 1880s Colombia

Xavier Duran
Universidad de los Andes, Colombia

Holmes Páez
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia

Camilo Torres
University of Aberdeen, UK

Abstract
The slow adoption of wagon roads on the Andes is an event widely noted. In this article
we document the arrival of the first wagon road to the Andes: the Cambao wagon road
connecting Bogotá to the Magdalena river valley in 1885. The road projects, its con-
struction and traffic once it opened are presented and discussed using a variety of newly
identified archival sources. It is argued that the historic and economic significance of
this technological milestone was probably obscured by the all too soon expected arrival
of railways.

Keywords
Wagon roads, technology adoption, Colombia

Corresponding author:
Xavier Duran, Universidad de los Andes, Edificio Santo Domingo, SD919, Calle 21 No. 1-20, Bogota 110311,
Colombia.
Email: xh.duran21@uniandes.edu.co
Duran et al. 71

Introduction
Wagon roads, or the human use of pack draft animals to move freight and pas-
sengers using a wheeled artefact over an intervened surface, are one of the most
significant and basic overland transport technologies. However, they took a long
time to arrive to different corners of the world. The wheel was invented north of
the Black sea and Mesopotamia 3000–4000 BCE and spread slowly through the
Mediterranean first by 1000 BCE, and North Europe and Asia by 0 CE. Before the
Columbian exchange started, most of the world used wagons except the American
continent, Australia and Sub-Saharan Africa.1
In the American continent, before colonisation started, no pack animals existed
and most transport was performed by humans. Only in Peru and Chile there is
evidence that Alpacas were used to carry small loads for short trips.2 Soon after,
the Spanish brought pack animals and they became the normal transport for most
freight and some travellers.3 But still wagons were not used in the Andes, except
for within city or city hinterland transportation. The absence of wagon roads for
inter-regional transportation on the Andes has been noted by many, but this has
been obscured by the attention devoted to the railways during the second half of
the nineteenth century and the automobile during the first half of the twentieth
century.4
In this article we document the “late” arrival of wagon roads to Colombia and
the Andes using newly identified archival sources. Particularly, key new informa-
tion comes from material from the Ministry of Public Works at the Archivo
General de la Naci
on, project and construction reports held at the Biblioteca
Luis Angel Arango, historic newspapers available at the Biblioteca Nacional, his-
torical maps obtained from the Instituto Geográfico August
ın Codazzi, as well as
direct field observation. We describe the construction of a mule pack road and its
expansion into the first wagon road on the Andes: the Cambao wagon road,
inaugurated in 1885 in what is today Cundinamarca, Colombia. It implied the
adoption of long-distance wheel transport on the Andes. Moreover, as the road
connected Bogotá to the Magdalena river valley (and thus to the Atlantic Ocean)
1
David Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian
Steppes Shaped the Modern World (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); Richard Bulliet,
The Wheel: Inventions and Reinventions (New York NY: Columbia University Press, 2016).
2
John. V Murra, “Herds and Herders in the Inca State”, in Anthony Leeds and Andrew Peter Vayda
(eds), Man, Culture, and Animals: The Role of Animals in Human Ecological Adjustments (Washington
D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1965), 185–216.
3
Jos
e Deustua, “Routes, Roads, and Silver Trade in Cerro de Pasco, 1820–1860: The Internal Market
in Nineteenth-Century Peru”, The Hispanic American Historical Review 74:1 (1994), 1–31; Germán
Ferro, A Lomo de Mula (Bogotá: Fondo Cultural Cafetero, 1994).
4
Clarence Jones, “The Commercial Growth of Peru”, Economic Geography 3:1 (1927), 23–49; Carlos
Contreras, “La Econom
ıa del Transporte en el Per

u, 1800–1914”, Apuntes. Revista de Ciencias Sociales


66 (2010), 59–81; Alvaro Pach

on and Mar
ıa Teresa Ram
ırez, La Infraestructura de Transporte en
Colombia Durante el Siglo XX (Bogotá: Banco de la Rep
ublica: Ediciones Fondo de Cultura
Economica, 2006); Carl Henrik Langebaek and Jorge Morales (eds), Por los Caminos del
Piedemonte: Una Historia de las Comunicaciones Entre los Andes Orientales y los Llanos, Siglos XVI
a XIX (Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes, 2000), 1–141.
72 The Journal of Transport History 41(1)

and the world, it facilitated the introduction of steam power and other important
technologies to the capital’s sabana, on the top of the Andes. Finally, we examine
different arguments to explain the slow construction of the road, once building had
started in 1869.5

Slow adoption in Latin America?

The adoption of transport infrastructure throughout the world has frequently been
slow. But even within this context, the slow arrival of the wheel to America is
remarkable.
The lack of pack animals slowed down the adoption of wagon roads in the
American continent. In the eastern part of North America, wagons were adopted
soon after the arrival of the Europeans. However, in Central and South America
even by the latter part of the eighteenth century only a few wagon roads existed. In
the Argentine pampas, a road connected Buenos Aires to Mendoza and another to
Salta. In Chile, a road connected Santiago to its port Valparaiso and another to
the southern city of Concepcion. And in Mexico some few stretches of the road
between Mexico City and Veracruz were accessible for wagons. Latin America,
even today, faces a long-standing transport infrastructure debt.6
Slow adoption of transportation has been explained in various ways. Probably
the two most alluded explanations are challenging geography and corruption.
Steep topography and inclement weather slows construction.7 Unethical behaviour
of entrepreneurs and politicians in the face of immensely tempting personal profit
opportunities and weak contracts slows construction down, generates over-costs
and inflames scandal. Over-costs, mostly originated from project delays, are
mainly evidence of the project promoter’s strategic misrepresentation or attempt
to mislead government and the public to win the contracts and extract rents during
construction.8
5
In this paper we focus exclusively on explaining why the wagon road was not built faster once its
construction started. Xavier Duran, Holmes Páez and Camilo Torres, “Why not Using the Wheel?”,
Working Paper of the Universidad de los Andes (Bogota), 2019, focuses on the arguments why the road
was not built earlier, between 1650 and 1850.
6
Richard Bulliet, The Wheel; Anton Zacharias Helms, Travels From Buenos Ayres, by Potosi, to Lima.
With Notes by the Translator, Containing Topographical Descriptions of the Spanish Possessions in South
America, Drawn From the Last and Best Authorities (London: Printed for R. Phillips, 1806), Maria
Piedad Alliende, “La Construcci
on de los Ferrocarriles en Chile 1850–1913”, Revista Austral de Ciencias
Sociales 5 (2001), 143–61, Eduardo Cavallo and Andrew Powell, 2019 Latin American and Caribbean
Macroeconomic Report: Building Opportunities to Grow in a Challenging World (Washington D.C.:
Inter-American Development Bank, 2019).
7
Robert Fogel, The Union Pacific Railroad: A Case in Premature Enterprise (Baltimore MD: The
Johns Hopkins Press, 1960); David Bain, Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad
(New York NY: Penguin Books, 2000); Jared Diamond, Germs, Guns and Steel: The Fates of Human
Societies (New York NY: W. W. Norton, 1987).
8
Oliver Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications (New York NY:
Free Press, 1975) provides the classic general presentation of the hold-up problem. R. M. Fraser,
“Compensation for Extra Preliminary and General (P&G) Costs Arising from Delays, Variations
And Disruptions: The Palmiet Pumped Storage Scheme”, Tunneling and Underground Space
Duran et al. 73

In our analysis of the Cambao Road, we do find evidence that dammed climate
and difficult topography, as well as corrupt schemes slowed construction once it
started. However, the extent of delay attributable to these two explanations is
probably less relevant than that of an explanation that has received less attention:
competition from an alternative technology. We argue that probably the most
important explanation for construction delay and a lower quality wagon road is
that contemporaries expected a railway to be built soon. A railway was perceived
as a more modern and efficient technology, expected to substitute both mule pack
and wagon roads, and hence reduced interest and investment to build the latter.
Only after contemporaries experienced more than a decade of frustrations to devel-
op a railway between the sabana of Bogotá and the Magdalena river valley, sup-
port for the wagon road reignited again.
Wars, fires, inappropriate practices and even deliberate destruction have affect-
ed nineteenth-century Colombia’s archives, both in their quantity and quality.9
This was true even for contemporaries who reported the “lack of data from the
previous government” regarding the road and its budget.10 In many cases, incom-
plete newspaper series are the only source available when governmental and leg-
islature documents were lost or damaged.11 Unfortunately, contracts, legislature
debates and voting records are often missing.
In fact, the difficulty to access sources about the history of the road may explain
why so little has been published about the Cambao road. For instance, the exis-
tence of the road has been noted by David Bushnell, Alfredo Ortega, Marco
Palacios and Frank Safford.12 However, none points out that it was the first
mountain and long-distance wagon road built in Colombia (and possibly in the
whole Andes region), nor they describe the construction process or discuss the

Technology 5:3 (1990), 205–16; World Bank, Development Report: Infrastructure for Development (New
York NY: Oxford University Press, 1994); Bent Flyvbjerg, Mette Skamris Holm and Søren Buhl,
“Underestimating Costs in Public Works Projects: Error or Lie?”, Journal of the American Planning
Association 68:3 (2002), 279–95; Stanley L. Engerman and Kenneth L. Sokoloff, “Digging the Dirt at
Public Expense: Governance in the Building of the Erie Canal and Other Public Works”, NBER
Working Paper 10965 (2004); Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of
Modern America (New York NY: W.W. Norton, 2011).
9
The Archive of Bogotá published a description of the several disasters suffered by the archives at
http://archivobogota.secretariageneral.gov.co/noticias/quince-anos-memoria-diversa-e-incluyente#_
ftnref3 (accessed 25 January 2020).
10
The National Archives of Colombia (hereafter AGN), Republican Section (001105), Report by the
Ministry of Public Works, “Bogotá-Magdalena Road”, 1888–1891, 384–94.
11
Muriel Laurent, “El Contrabando En Colombia Durante El Siglo XIX (1821–1886): Fuentes
Documentales Y Aspectos Metodol
ogicos Para Su Estudio”, Am
erica Latina en la Historia Econ

omica
12:2 (2005), 155–77.
12
David Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation In Spite of Itself (Berkeley CA:
University of California Press, 2003); Alfredo Ortega, Ferrocarriles Colombianos: La Ultima Experiencia
Ferroviaria Del Pais 1920–1930 (Bogotá: Imprenta Nacional, 1932); Marco Palacios, El Caf
e En
Colombia, 1850–1970: Una Historia Econ
omica, Social y Pol
ıtica (Tlalpan: El Colegio de M
exico,
2009); Frank Safford, “El Problema de los Transportes en Colombia en el Siglo XIX”, in Adolfo
Meisel Roca and Mar
ıa Teresa Ram
ırez (eds), Econom
ıa Colombiana Del Siglo XIX (Bogotá: Fondo
de Cultura Econ
omica – Banco de la Rep
ublica, 2010).
74 The Journal of Transport History 41(1)

reasons for its late arrival.13 Consequently, this paper aims at documenting the
basic facts about construction of the first long-distance trade wagon road in
Colombia and the Andes, along with understanding better why this process was
slow even after it had started.

Transportation between the Magdalena river valley and Bogotá

The Cambao road connected Bogotá, Colombia’s capital and most populous city,
to Cambao (hence the name), a village situated on the Magdalena river valley. By
1900, Colombia’s income per capita was only 25 per cent of that in the United
States, a third of that in Argentina, half of that in Chile, 40 per cent lower than
that of Mexico (but about 30 per cent higher than that of Brazil and Peru).14
In Colombia, the Andes cordillera breaks into three mountain chains that con-
tinue heading north, creating two dramatic deep basins and a rugged landscape.
The Magdalena river valley, between the eastern and the central mountain chains,
creates a profound basin that crosses almost the whole country from south to
north, discharging its waters on the Caribbean Sea (see Figure 1).
Before the construction of the Cambao wagon road, Bogotá was connected to
the Magdalena river valley and the Atlantic Ocean via a narrow colonial path that
allowed human or mule pack transport only. The road connected Bogotá to
Facatativá, a small settlement on the western border of Bogotá’s sabana, nearly
2,700 m above the sea level, and then went downhill crossing two smaller mountain
chains to reach the Magdalena river valley at Bodegas, just over 200 m above the
sea level, on the eastern shore of the Magdalena basin. Typically, pack animals
needed four to six days for the downhill journey (see Figure 2).15
The 125 km of the narrow colonial road between Bogotá to Facatativá were
built in the sixteenth century. The project was directed by Hernando de Alcocer
and Alonso de Olalla, two entrepreneurs who gained the privilege to build the road
and profit from toll earnings. The road followed indigenous people walking paths
and used ancient Roman road stone structure and surface technology. At the end
of the colonial period and during most of the nineteenth century, communal
labour and local government expenditures funded by bridge tolls financed

13
Some other few short and even wagon roads were built in Colombia in the nineteenth century. The
Bogotá–Facatativá was a 44 km long wagon road that connected Bogotá to the border of the sabana.
Wagons seem to have used this road since the 1820s according to Salvador Camacho, Notas de Viaje:
Colombia y Estados Unidos (1897). The Medell
ın–Barbosa wagon road reported by David Bushnell was
also just over 40 km and built over the Aburrá valley in Medellin’s hinterland. Bushnell, The Making of
Modern Colombia, 135–36. The C
ucuta-Zulia river wagon road was a 16 km fairly even wagon road
built in the 1860s and 1870s to facilitate coffee exports. The road was opened even though it was never
completed and finished. Ortega, Ferrocarriles Colombianos.
14
Angus Madisson, The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective (Paris: OECD, 2001).
15
Luis Angel Arango Library, Bogotá (hereafter BLAA), Rare and handwritten documents, Nieto,
Rafael. “Cambao En La Politica”, 26 October 1885, 4–5; Magdalena Jim
enez, “V
ıas de Comunicaci
on
Desde el Virreinato Hasta la Aparici
on de la Navegaci
on a Vapor Por el Magdalena”, Historia Cr
ıtica 2
(2017), 118–25; Ortega, Ferrocarriles colombianos.
Duran et al. 75

Figure 1. Map of Colombia, the Andes, Honda and Bogotá. Source: Authors’ drawing.

maintenance. Until the Cambao wagon road opened in 1885, everything Bogotá
traded travelled through this road.16
However, in the 1850s Colombia experienced important changes. The now dom-
inant liberal party introduced a federal political system and stimulated economic
liberalism. The economic structure began to distance itself from the colonial one.
Gold and silver exports, the main source of central government revenue during
colonial times, began to lose importance to short, sporadic export booms of

16
Roberto Velandia, “Todos Los Caminos Conducen A Santa Fe”, in Pilar Moreno de Angel, Jorge
Orlando Melo and Mariano Useche Losada (eds), Caminos Reales De Colombia (Bogotá: Fondo FEN
Colombia, 1995), 129–56; Langebaek and Morales, Por Los Caminos Del Piedemonte; Jim
enez, “V
ıas
De Comunicaci
on Desde El Virreinato Hasta”.
76 The Journal of Transport History 41(1)

Figure 2. Map of Bogotá, the Magdalena river valley and the roads. Note: (year) indicates year of
completion of road or railway. Source: Author’s drawing based on Rafael Nieto, Daniel Aldana,
“Cambao En La Pol
ıtica”, 26 October 1885, p. 16; 1901, 1942 and 1947 maps available at Instituto
Geográfico August
ın Codazzi and fieldwork over the route.

tobacco, dyestuff, quinine and coffee. The export growth represented an important
inducement for the improvement of transportation in Colombia.17

Wagon road projects

The initial proposals for a wagon road were introduced in the late 1850s. All plans
kept the Bogotá–Facatativá route, but suggested alternative ways to descend into
the Magdalena river valley. Salvador Camacho, who later would become
Colombia’s finance minister and interim president, was the first to produce in
1858 a formal proposal.18 In his pamphlet entitled “Wagon Road to the
Magdalena River”, Camacho argued that transport improvements are at the
heart of civilisation. Furthermore, he stated that the existing colonial mule pack
connecting Bogotá to Magdalena river valley was an impediment to progress.
Based on the findings of the Chorographic Expedition led by August
ın Codazzi
17
Marco Palacios and Frank Safford, Colombia: Pa
ıs Fragmentado, Sociedad Dividida: Su Historia
(Bogotá: Grupo Editorial Norma, 2002); Jos
e Antonio Ocampo, Colombia y La Econom
ıa Mundial
1830–1910 (Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, 2013).
18
Camacho, Notas de viaje, 21.
Duran et al. 77

in the 1850s, Camacho examined six alternative routes for the descent from Bogotá
to the Magdalena river. He concluded that the most appropriate route, given the
existing population and agricultural activities in the region, as well as the compar-
atively low slope, would be one connecting Bogotá to Girardot (see Figure 2).19
In 1863, the engineer Indalecio Li
evano, professor at the Engineering school of
the National university and director of the National astronomic observatory, per-
formed fieldwork and developed a more detailed and accurate plan, producing a
series of reports. The 1863 report examines the route proposed by Camacho and
finds it inadequate because at certain areas the inclinations were too high and the
soil structure too muddy. Therefore, Li
evano recommended – in his 1865 report – a
route close to what became the Cambao wagon road route, but with a final descent
into the Magdalena river valley near Honda instead of Cambao.20
The Cambao wagon route was located in 1869. Construction of the road started
in 1869 by connecting a series of short and narrow walking paths that were extend-
ed and widened.21 By July 1870, and after investing 35,000 1870 US$ (equivalent to
0.63 million today’s US$), a single-line mule pack road 104 km long, with a max-
imum grade of 5 per cent, and just over 1 m wide had been built between Cambao
and Los Alpes in less than a year by engineer Nepomuceno Gonzalez (see Figure
2). The road was expected to be shortened to 96 km by cutting some curves.
Li
evano travelled this new road in just over one day and suggested that the journey
between the mountain pass and the Magdalena river valley could be performed in
about 10 h. As construction started, more knowledge about the topography of the
region was gained and the project consequently adjusted. Finally, the project
planned to have the mule pack transformed into a macadamised two-way wagon
road in two more years for a total cost of at least 176,000 1870 US$ (equivalent to
3.17 million today’s US$).22
The route, although technically the most feasible, faced important challenges.
Its surroundings were not highly populated, and Cambao, although a natural port
on the Magdalena river, had not developed yet.
At the same time, a railway appeared as a serious alternative for the first time in
Colombia. This triggered a political debate over the route and technology choice.
Some politicians, including Salvador Camacho, now as Secretary of Finance in
19
Ibid., 36–63
20
BLAA, Bogotá, Rare and handwritten documents, Lievano, Indalecio, “Camino Carretero Al
Magdalena”, 28 July 1870, 1–15.
21
Los Alpes is today the town of Albán, Cundinamarca. A wagon road connecting Facatativá to los
Alpes was built in the 1880s as part of the colonial road, continuing the wagon road on the sabana.
22
BLAA, Bogotá, Rare and handwritten documents, Lievano, Indalecio, “Reporte Sobre Exploracion
Para Construir Camino Carretero y Ferrocarril Al Secretario de Haciendo Del Estado Soberano de
Cundinamarca”, 13 November 1865, 17–21; BLAA, Bogotá, Rare and handwritten documents,
“Camino Carretero Al Magdalena. Informe Del Presidente de La Junta Administradora de
Occidente Al Se~ nor Secretario de Hacienda”, 20 June 1869, 13–14; BLAA, Bogotá, Rare and hand-
written documents, Pereira, Nicolas. “Camino Carretero Al Magdalena”, 20 July 1870, 1–6). Although
the road’s route location fieldwork and reports were led by Indalecio Lievano, Nepomuceno Gonzalez
has been named as the engineer who located the route ((Republican Section (001105)), Report by the
Ministry of Public Works, “Bogotá-Magdalena road”, 1888–1891, 284–94.
78 The Journal of Transport History 41(1)

1871, continued favouring construction of a wagon road. He stated that wagon

roads were cost efficient and more suited for Colombia’s low traffic intensity. The
estimated kilometre cost of a railway via Cambao was at least ten times higher
than that of the kilometre cost the wagon road. Additionally, he argued that there
was not enough domestic private capital for railway’s investments, and foreign
private capital did not have confidence in Colombia’s government. Further, he
predicted that decisions about the distribution of railway projects would ignite
intense political tension between various Colombian states. Despite these argu-
ments, a kind of railway fever developed in the 1870s – although it is not entirely
clear why the political and public interest switched away from wagon roads.23

Construction, 1870–85
In 1872 Aquileo Parra, Secretary of Finance and a strong promoter of railways,
succeeded Salvador Camacho, and Colombian federal government proposed a
plan to use concession contracts to induce private entrepreneurs to build eight
railways with partial public funding. One of these was the railway between
Bogotá and Honda. In 27 December 1874, the state of Cundinamarca (i.e.
Bogotá region) granted Charles Brown the concession to found the Compa~ n
ıa
del Ferrocarril de Occidente [Western Railway Company] and build a rail line
between Bogotá and Bodegas (see Figure 2).24 To speed up construction, the com-
pany was expected to start construction from both terminals, from Bodegas to the
east and from Bogotá to the west. The Western Railway Company was also
responsible for extending the width of the mule pack road over the Cambao
route to transform it into a wagon road and transport railway inputs into the
sabana of Bogotá. However, by the late 1870s, the public and politicians perceived
railway construction as disappointing: the Company had only performed earth-
works over a couple of kilometres to the west of Bogotá and to the east of
Bodegas, and built a meagre 3 km of railway track east of Bodegas.25
23
BLAA, Bogotá, Rare and handwritten documents, Pereira, Nicolas. “Camino Carretero Al
Magdalena”, 20 July 1870, 1–6 report intense debates. Camacho, Notas de Viaje, 11, 25–6. Roberto
Junguito (“Las Finanzas Publicas en el Siglo XIX”, in Adolfo Meisel Roca and Mari
a Teresa Rami
rez
(eds), Economi
a Colombiana del Siglo XIX, 41–134, here 82) reports the United States of Colombia’s
president Aquileo Parra strong preference for railways. A more general analysis beyond specific sources
or people is desirable; however, the legislature debates and voting outcomes are not available, neither
press discussions of the final decision to favor railways have been found. Thus, we cannot explain why
the railroad won over the wagon road. In fact, Salvador Camacho in his 1897 Notas de Viaje, 25–6, also
accepts he still does not understand the swing for railways. We speculate that the impression people had
at the time was that rail transport was a more modern and efficient transport mode.
24
Note the Western Railway Company planned rail line was Bogotá–Bodegas, while the railway
eventually built and finished in 1938 and depicted in Figure 2 is Bogotá–Puerto Salgar.
25
Camacho, Notas de Viaje, 26–7; BLAA, Bogotá, Rare and handwritten documents, Corredor, Julio,
y Maximo Nieto. “Ferrocarril de Occidente. Informe de La Comision Nombrada Por Asamblea
Lejislativa”, 3 November 1880, 6–7; BLAA, Bogotá, Rare and handwritten documents, L
ezmes,
Ricardo; Restrepo, Lucio; Guti
errez, Belisario; y Espinosa, Rafael, “Informe Sobre Los Ferrocarriles
De La Sabana Y Occidente Y La V
ıa De Cambao”, 13 April 1883, 4–5.
Duran et al. 79

On 8 February 1882, the Western Railway Company contract was renegoti-

ated into a shared ownership contract. The state of Cundinamarca would offer
the Company the right to use and exploit the railway between Bodegas and
Facatativá for 90 years and pay for part of the interest of the bonds issued to
finance construction. The Company was expected to build the railway in less
than four years and offer passenger and freight transport services under regu-
lated prices. The Western Railway Company would also supply the rails, loco-
motives and rolling stock for the Cundinamarca government to build a railway
between Facatativá and Bogotá using the newly created Compa~ n
ıa del
Ferrocarril de la Sabana [Sabana Railway Company].26 The state of
Cundinamarca thus became responsible for building the Sabana Railway,
facing the challenge of organising the company and construction, all with
State resources.27
Next, the state of Cundinamarca created a commission of engineers to advice
the government on the best way to perform construction of the Sabana railway.
The commission suggested widening the existing mule pack Cambao road to trans-
port the railway inputs: while the 1870 plan (which was never realised) was a two-
way, 6 m width wagon road, the 1882 project considered a more modest 3 m wide
road, the minimum one-way wagon road required to bring railway inputs into the
sabana.28
The works on the Cambao road re-started, with smaller width, improved design
and a budget of 37,860 1870 US$ (equivalent to 0.68 million todays’s US$).
Needless to add, the expectation was that when the railway opened, the wagon
road would not be necessary, at least for Bogotá–Magdalena river valley traffic.29
In other words, the wagon road was instrumental for the railway.
The one-way wagon road was completed in 1885. It was 97 km long and allowed
wheeled long-distance trade between Bogotá and the Magdalena river valley for
the first time. As expected, the opening of the wagon road allowed construction of
the Sabana railway to gain pace: Traffic over the wagon road increased and, not
surprisingly, when the road closed for temporary maintenance, users and traders
complained.30

26
BLAA, Bogotá, Rare and handwritten documents, L
ezmes, Ricardo; Restrepo, Lucio; Guti
errez,
Belisario; y Espinosa, Rafael, “Informe Sobre Los Ferrocarriles De La Sabana Y Occidente Y La V
ıa
De Cambao”, 13 April 1883, 5–7.
27
Ibid., 7–8.
28
Ibid., 7–8, 11.
29
BLAA, Bogotá, Rare and handwritten documents, L
ezmes, Ricardo; Restrepo, Lucio; Guti
errez,
Belisario; y Espinosa, Rafael, Informe sobre los ferrocarriles de La Sabana y Occidente y la v
ıa de
Cambao, 13 April 1883; BLAA, Bogotá, Rare and handwritten documents, Wiesner, Jacobo; y de
Fuentes, Jos
e, October 1884, 1.
30
AGN, Bogotá, Republican Section, (001105), Report by the Ministry of Public Works, “Bogotá-
Magdalena road”, 1888–1891.
80 The Journal of Transport History 41(1)

Traffic, 1888–90
The road’s traffic grew and was crucial for Bogotá’s industrialisation. As expected,
the Sabana Railway Company railway stock moved over the road. An 1890
account reports that two locomotives, rail and other materials were transported
over the road, but also pianos, foreign merchandise imports and tropical fruit
exports. The road’s superintendent stated in 1891 that the use of the road went
largely beyond railroad support: “without Cambao [road] there would be no
Sabana Railway, nor could one think about construction of the Northern
Railway or the electricity company or the aqueduct, or that machinery for private
companies could have been introduced”.31
The road was not improved during the following years. Even if traffic grew and
was key for Bogotá’s industrialisation, the macadam was not extended, and the
surface suffered with the increasing traffic. It is thus remarkable how a road built
with so little resources and – mainly – to serve a railway, played such a critical role
in the industrialisation and development of Bogotá and the welfare improvements
of its citizens, at least until railways serving Bogotá were completed during the
twentieth century (see Figure 2).

Expansion, 1888–91
The 1880s made it clear that Bogotá would take a long time to have its rail con-
nection to the Magdalena river. The Western Railway Company went through
contractual complications, allegations of corruption and troubled political inter-
ests. Thus, in 1886 a newly formed central national government took the Cambao
road as a matter of national public interest. Two key improvements were planned
for expansion. First, the new government aimed to widen the road to at least 6 m,
so to allow for two-way traffic. Second, it aimed to complete the macadam surface
for those parts which still did not have such a surface. In 1888, after two years of
disputes between old and new contractors and the new government in charge,
expansion took off.32

31
AGN, Secci
on Rep
ublica: Ministerio de obras p

ublicas, Camino Bogotá-Magdalena (001105),
384–94.
32
The Western Railway Company railroad was finally inaugurated in 1938. Since the complications of
the Western Railway Company rail line were already clear by the early 1880s, a new rail concession
contract was granted in 1882 to build a railway to connect Bogotá via Girardot. This rail line was
completed in 1909, Pach
on and Ram
ırez, La Infraestructura de Transporte en Colombia Durante el siglo
XX, 5. AGN, Bogotá, Republican Section (001105), Report by the Ministry of Public Works, “Bogotá-
Magdalena road”, 1888–1891; BLAA, Bogotá, Rare and handwritten documents, n.a. “Ferrocarril De
La Sabana: Tercera Copia De La Escritura De Compa~ n
ıa Formada Entre El Estado Y El Se~ nor
Leopoldo Tanco, 1885”; BLAA, Bogotá, Rare and handwritten documents, Ferrocarril de la Sabana
publicaci

on oficial del distrito federal, de 1886.
Duran et al. 81

Administrative struggles, financial issues and other constrains slowed the con-
struction. Even by 1906 parts of the road only had a width of 5 m. There is no
evidence of any inauguration ceremony.33
The Cambao road regained some importance when the automobile arrived.
Auto roads and railways competed for public resources, and after the 1930s the
government prioritised auto roads.34 Parts of the Cambao road were then turned
into a motorway. However, again, the road was frowned upon and went into
oblivion when the alternative route connecting Facatativá to Honda was finished.
Today the Cambao road is used by local traffic only, unless damages affect the
Honda’s leg or the Ruta del Sol that connects Bogotá with the Caribbean coast.35

How to explain the slow construction?

Construction of the Cambao wagon road was initiated in 1869. The plan expected
a mule pack road to be built within a year and a complete two-way wagon road
within three years. In fact, accounting only for construction time, a mule pack road
was built within a year and a 3 m carriageway within less than four years, all within
the expected budget! Comparison of the cost per kilometre suggests construction
was indeed not expensive. Early 1860’s contemporary macadamised wagon roads
were built in California and British Columbia with about 3,500 and 2,000 1870 US
$ per kilometre (equivalent to 63,000 and 37,000 today’s US$, respectively). The
Cambao average kilometre cost was 751 1870 US$, and the available information
for the macadamised part of the road suggests a kilometre cost of 1,918 1870 US$
(equivalent to 13,000 and 35,000 today’s US$, respectively).36 However, between
completion of the mule pack road and commencement of the widening in a wagon
road, almost 13 years elapsed and the road was finished with a lower standard (that
is narrower and only partially macadamised) than initially planned. Even by 1900,
more than 30 years after construction started and with no alternative rail connec-
tion yet available for Bogotá, the wheel road had not been built to the standard
initially planned. What explains such a delay? What explains a delay from an
expected 3 years to 17 years for a one-way wagon?
The literature has identified two main types of explanations. Environmental and
technical explanations emphasise the role that limited knowledge over nature plays
when building transport networks.37 Incentives’ explanations emphasise that the
33
BLAA, Bogotá, Rare and handwritten documents, Ribon, Tomas, “Carretera de Cambao.
Contrato Celebrado Con El Se~ nor Tomas Ribon”, April 1906.
34
Colin Divall and Ralf Roth, From Rail to Road and Back Again?: A Century of Transport
Competition and Interdependency (Farnham: Routledge, 2015).
35
Pach
on and Ram
ırez, La Infraestructura de Transporte en Colombia Durante el Siglo XX, 66–7.
36
Eliot Lord, Comstock Mining and Miners (Washington D.C.: Govt. Print. Off., 1883) and Frank
Leonard, “‘Eighth Wonder of the World’: The Cariboo Wagon Road as British Columbia’s First
Megaproject”, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 27:1 (2014), 169–200. Width and quality
of the North American roads was probably higher than that of the Colombian road, but not precise
comparative information is available.
37
Fogel, The Union Pacific; Bain, Empire Express; Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel.
82 The Journal of Transport History 41(1)

opportunity for large profits in the face of poor monitoring, contracting or

enforcement may induce morally weak private and public agents to offer mislead-
ing information to increase the chances of extracting rents.38 We examine here the
role played by nature and incentives in the delay observed in the road’s construc-
tion by analysing the delay caused by adverse climate and contractor hold-up.
Construction of a road under torrential rains and rapid weed growth, typical of
tropical environments, is challenging. The sources examined indicate that torren-
tial rains damaged the road and made it temporarily impassable. For instance,
superintendent Crespo reported in July 1889 that those parts of the road that had
not been macadamised suffered damage during the rainy season and a group of
workers would have to be permanently deployed to maintain that part of the road.
However, the reports also reveal that the macadamised road does work and resists
rainy season fairly well.39
Damming weather is, however, not exclusive of the Bogotá slopes to the
Magdalena river valley. In California it was also common to observe roads dete-
riorate and become temporarily impassable during winter, but even at the height of
winter, roads were rapidly reopened. In Panama, railway construction works were
performed under an even harsher tropical environment than the Bogotá slopes.40
Thus, the problem seems to be more one of underinvestment than one of incom-
parably damming climate.
Contractors may hold up government to extract additional rents out of the
original contract. Contractors may threat to stop works until payment is raised,
arguing that unforeseen events increased costs. One of the nine cases of contractors
for which records are available fits this pattern. The re-negotiation took place for
more than a year, although superintendent Crespo argues that the contractors, the
Mendieta brothers, did not receive any additional payment over the initial agree-
ment. Alternatively, as observed by the road’s engineer Enrique Morgan, contrac-
tors can accept a contract for a sum below its real cost, start the work, stop and
declare bankrupt.41 If contracts start without contractors’ getting insurance, gov-
ernment will have a long and difficult legal conflict laid ahead to recover the money
advanced. And indeed, the correspondence with five of the nine contractors sug-
gests that this was the case. We found no information reporting whether the gov-
ernment did recover the advanced payments performed to these contractors or not.
However, although evidence is scant, Crespo argues he was able to hire workers

38
Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies; R. M. Fraser, “Compensation for Extra P&G”; World Bank,
Development Report; Flyvbjerg et al. “Underestimating Costs?”; Engerman and Sokoloff, “Digging The
Dirt”; White, Railroaded.
39
AGN, Bogotá, Republican Section (001105), Report by the Ministry of Public Works, “Bogotá-
Magdalena road”, 1888–1891, 236–37.
40
Lord, Comstock Mining and Miners, 71; Noel Maurer and Carlos Yu, The Big Ditch: How America
Took, Built, Ran, and Ultimately Gave Away the Panama Canal (Princeton NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2010).
41
AGN, Bogotá, Republican Section (001105), Report by the Ministry of Public Works, “Bogotá-
Magdalena road”, 1888–1891, 74–8.
Duran et al. 83

directly to replace the contractor and to work in parallel on different sections of

the road, thus minimising the time lost due to hold-up, if not the resources lost.42
In contrast to the moderate importance of these two standard explanations,
probably the strongest factor delaying construction of a wagon road, once it
had started, seems to have been the belief that a railway would soon start to
operate. The wagon road was annexed to the railway; a temporary minimum
operationally wagon road was sufficient to transport supplies for railway construc-
tion on the sabana. Transport demands other than railway inputs could wait until
the railway was finished, which was expected to happen promptly.
The first indication of this situation came just after the Cambao route was
located and the mule pack road was finished in 1870. Political decisions favoured
construction of multiple railways and led to high capital scarcity for all railway
projects. Politically and fiscally, the wagon road was side-lined.
Additionally, in December 1874 the government decided that the construction
of the Cambao wagon road would be a part of the Western Railway contract; the
motivation to build the wagon road was precisely to transport heavy and large
inputs for a railway on Bogotá’s sabana.43 Had the Western Railway construction
advanced rapidly, inclusion of the Cambao road under the Western Railway con-
tract would have accelerated construction of the wagon road. But, since the rail-
way developed sluggishly, there was no immediate need for a wagon road. The
13-year delay in building the road was essentially connected to the fact that the
wagon road was relegated under railway construction. All other transport
demands had to wait. The railway, in turn, was not built partly because of civil
war during the second half of the 1870s, partly because of inappropriate contract
design, and partly because of capital scarcity.44
The second indication of this situation came with the negotiation to identify the
cheapest possible way to build the wagon road to bring inputs into the region for
the Sabana Railway. In 1882, the commission of engineers had identified activities
to expand the road into a 6 m wide two-way wagon road. Persuaded that
Cundinamarca’s government would not invest as much on the road, the engineer-
ing commission tried to argue that a one-way narrow road with a two-way width

42
Ibid., 41–9, 68–89, 99–112, 161–2, 180–7, 190–3, 206–27, 236–7, 250–3, 267–72.
43
BLAA, Bogotá, Rare and handwritten documents, Corredor, Julio, y Maximo Nieto. “Ferrocarril
de Occidente. Informe de La Comision Nombrada Por Asamblea Lejislativa”, 3 November 1880, 6;
BLAA, Bogotá, Rare and handwritten documents, L
ezmes, Ricardo; Restrepo, Lucio; Guti
errez,
Belisario; y Espinosa, Rafael, Informe sobre los ferrocarriles de La Sabana y Occidente y la v
ıa de
Cambao, 13 April 1883, 7.
44
BLAA, Bogotá, rare and handwritten documents, Nieto, Rafael, y Aldana, Daniel. “Cambao En La
Politica”, 26 October 1885, 8 indicates war as an important factor delaying construction of the Sabana
Railway and the Cambao road. Our analysis also suggests that traffic was probably not high enough to
induce entry of a private railway.
84 The Journal of Transport History 41(1)

extension in key locations was enough to bring inputs into the sabana. The com-
mission accepted, therefore, that it could not promote construction of a permanent
wagon road, but only a temporary one to transport railway inputs.45
Considering carefully investment in a wagon road when the perspective of a
railway exists is not necessarily a bad decision. However, when the expectation of
fast arrival of a railway is overblown by optimism, it does become a source of
delay. The railway projects crowded out investment for the wagon road, but also
engineering and business attention was crowded out. The 13 years of delay con-
nected to the relegation of the wagon road with respect to the railway represent
about two-thirds of the delay in completing the one-way wagon road once its
construction had started. Furthermore, the quality of the wagon road ended up
being lower than initially planned (narrower and only partially macadamised),
precisely because of this early rail arrival expectation. The best became the
enemy of the good.
Frank Safford suggested the weight of rugged geography and economic stag-
nation deflated well-intentioned but overblown initiatives to promote scientific and
technical development in nineteenth-century Colombia.46 The paucity of resources
allocated to the wagon road, guided by the belief that a railway would arrive soon,
suggests Colombians lacked the ability to appreciate critical distinctions to engage
in technological development by making the steps of the technology ladder.
Colombians in the 1870s may have dreamt of building a railway, while the traffic
demand and organisation capabilities Colombia exhibited were more appropriate
for a wagon road, at least for one or two more decades.

Conclusions
The adoption of wagon roads and the wheel was slow in most of America.
However, on the Andes, adoption seems to have been the slowest.
We document the arrival of the first wagon road to the Andes: the Cambao
wagon road connecting Bogotá to the Magdalena river valley. The first road proj-
ect was proposed by politician-entrepreneur Salvador Camacho who planned to
build the Bogotá–Girardot route. Indalecio Li
evano and his team of engineers
performed fieldwork to locate the best route and found the Cambao road in 1869.
The plan was to build a mule pack road within the first year and continue
expanding and improving it to have the two-way macadamised wagon road by
the third year, all at a cost of at least 176,000 1870 US$. The mule pack road was

45
BLAA, Bogotá, Rare and handwritten documents, L
ezmes, Ricardo; Restrepo, Lucio; Guti
errez,
Belisario; y Espinosa, Rafael, Informe sobre los ferrocarriles de La Sabana y Occidente y la v
ıa de
Cambao, 13 April 1883, 11.
46
Safford, The Ideal of the Practical: Colombia’s Struggle to Form a Technical Elite. See also David
Edgerton, Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2007), for a more general argument.
Duran et al. 85

built within the first year for 35,000 1870 US$. But the expansion and improve-
ment had to wait. In 1883, another push came, with an additional investment of
37,860 1870 US$ to build a one-way partially macadamised carriageway. The first
long-distance trade road in Colombia and the Andes was open for freight wheel
transportation by 1885.
The evidence suggests a 13-year delay and a lower quality than planned wagon
road, but it is possible no cost over-run was experienced. Like in many other
infrastructure projects, damming climate and hold-up seem to have contributed
to the delay to some extent. However, the most important explanation for the
delay seems to have been the overly optimistic expectation that railways would
be arriving soon. Such expectations probably induced government officials to
reduce the budget to build the wagon road and offer it resources only intermit-
tently. Paucity of resources after the project started led to the slow arrival of the
wheel to Colombia and the Andes.

Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Massimo Moraglio, the two invited editors of this special issue Alexis de
Greiff and Mikael Hård, and the two anonymous referees for their comments, which helped
to improve this paper. Frank Safford, Marco Palacios and Luis Fernando Molina provided
very enthusiastic encouragement to develop this project. Mauricio Tovar provided invalu-
able guidance at the Archivo General de la Nacion, Colombia. Andres Alvarez, Dan Bogart,
Steve Broadberry, Juan Francisco Castro, Carlos Davila, Martha Garavito, Andres Ghul,
Barbara Goebel, Jo Guldi, Nicolas de Roux, Carlos Hernandez, Alfonso Herranz-Locan,
Frank Leonard, Andrea Lluch, Pablo Martin-Ace~ na, Miguel Martinez, Joel Mokyr, Martin
Monsalve, Elisabeth Perlman, Florian Ploeckl, John Tang, Dan Zunino Singh, Javier Vidal
and participants at conference and workshop presentations at World Business History
Conference, Frankfurt 2014; Workshop The Economic Impact of Canals and Railways:
New Perspective, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia 2015; World
Economic History Congress, Kyoto, Japan, 2015, Universidad del Pacifico, Lima, Peru,
2016; Economic History Society, Egham, U.K., 2017; Seminar GHE, Universidad de los
Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, 2017; Workshop Infrastructure, Society and Culture, Bogotá,
Colombia, 5–6 December 2017, World Economic History Congress, Cambridge, USA 2018.
Mauricio Martignon, Felipe Saenz and Juan Pablo Serrano provided excellent research
assistance. Xavier Duran is grateful to the Business History Initiative at the Harvard
Business School, Harvard University, for hosting him as Alfred Chandler Jr.
International Fellow while part of this article was written.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article: Funding from the Vice-presidency of Research and
86 The Journal of Transport History 41(1)

the School of Management University of los Andes, as well as support from the ICETEX’s
Pasaporte a la Ciencia scholarship are gratefully acknowledged.

ORCID iD
Xavier Duran https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3075-3017

Bibliography
Archival sources
Luis Angel Arango Library, Bogotá, Rare and handwritten documents, Camacho,
Salvador. “Camino Carretero Al Magdalena”, 1858.
Luis Angel Arango Library, Bogotá, “Rare and Handwritten Documents”, Camacho,
Salvador. Notas de Viaje: Colombia y Estados Unidos, 1897.
Luis Angel Arango Library, Bogotá, “Rare and Handwritten Documents”, Corredor, Julio;
y Nieto, Maximo, “Ferrocarril de Occidente. Informe de la Comision Nombrada Por
Asamblea Lejislativa”, 3 November 1880.
Luis Angel Arango Library, Bogotá, “Rare and Handwritten Documents”, Lesmez,
Ricardo, Lucio Restrepo; Belisario Gutierrez; y Rafael Espinosa. “Informe de las
Comisiones de las Camaras y del Poder Ejecutivo Sobre los Ferrocarrile de la Sabana
y Occidente y la via de Cambao”, Bogotá, April 1883.
Luis Angel Arango Library, Bogotá, “Rare and Handwritten Documents”, Lievano,
Indalecio. “Camino Carretero Al Magdalena”, 28 July 1870.
Luis Angel Arango Library, Bogotá, “Rare and Handwritten Documents”, Li
evano,
Indalecio “Reporte Sobre Exploracion Para Construir Camino Carretero y
Ferrocarril al Secretario de Hacienda del Estado Soberano de Cundinamarca”, 13
November 1865.
Luis Angel Arango Library, Bogotá, “Rare and Handwritten Documents”, n.a. “Ferrocarril
de la Sabana: Tercera Copia De la Escritura De Compa~ n
ıa Formada Entre el Estado y el
Se~nor Leopoldo Tanco”, 1885.
Luis Angel Arango Library, Bogotá, “Rare and Handwritten Documents”, Nieto, Maximo.
“Proyecto de Lei Sobre Vias de Comunicacion”, 1879.
Luis Angel Arango Library, Bogotá, “Rare and Handwritten Documents”, Nieto, Rafael; y
Aldana, Daniel. “Cambao en la Politica”, 26 October 1885.
Luis Angel Arango Library, Bogotá, “Rare and Handwritten Documents”, Pereira, Nicolas.
“Camino Carretero al Magdalena”, 20 July 1870.
Luis Angel Arango Library, Bogotá, “Rare and Handwritten Documents”, Pereira, Nicolas,
“Camino Carretero al Magdalena. Informe del Presidente de la Junta Administradora de
Occidente al Se~nor Secretario de Hacienda”, 20 June 1869.
Luis Angel Arango Library, Bogotá, “Rare and Handwritten Documents”, Ribon,
Tomas, “Carretera de Cambao. Contrato Celebrado Con El Se~ nor Tomas Ribon”,
April 1906.
Luis Angel Arango Library, Bogotá, “Rare and Handwritten Documents”, Wiesner,
Jacobo; y de Fuentes, Jos
e, October 1884.
Nacional Archive, Bogotá, Republican Section (001105), Report by the Ministry of Public
Works, “Bogotá-Magdalena road”, 1888–1891.
Nacional Library, Bogotá, Diario Oficial, “Contrato Para la Ejecuci

on de Varios Trabajos
de Ingenier
ıa en la v
ıa de Cambao”, 13 March 1888.
Duran et al. 87

Published sources
Maria Piedad Alliende, “La Construcci
on de los Ferrocarriles en Chile 1850–1913”, Revista
Austral de Ciencias Sociales 5 (2001), 143–61.
David Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian
Steppes Shaped the Modern World (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).
David Bain, Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (New York NY:
Penguin Books, 2000).
Richard Bulliet, The Wheel: Inventions and Reinventions (New York NY: Columbia
University Press, 2016).
David Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation In Spite of Itself (Berkeley CA:
University of California Press, 2003).
Eduardo Cavallo and Andrew Powell, 2019 Latin American and Caribbean Macroeconomic
Report: Building Opportunities to Grow in a Challenging World (Washington D.C.: Inter-
American Development Bank, 2019).
Carlos Contreras, “La Econom
ıa Del Transporte en el Per
u, 1800–1914”, Apuntes. Revista
de Ciencias Sociales 66 (2010), 59–81
Jos
e Deustua, “Routes, Roads, and Silver Trade in Cerro de Pasco, 1820–1860: The Internal
Market in Nineteenth-Century Peru”, The Hispanic American Historical Review 74:1
(1994), 1–31.
Jared Diamond, Germs, Guns and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York NY: W.
W. Norton, 1987).
Colin Divall and Ralf Roth, From Rail to Road and Back Again? A Century of Transport
Competition and Interdependency (Farnham: Routledge, 2015).
Xavier Duran, Holmes Páez and Camilo Torres, “Why Not to Use the Wheel?” Working
Paper (Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes, 2019).
David Edgerton, Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007).
Stanley L. Engerman and Kenneth L. Sokoloff, “Digging the Dirt at Public Expense:
Governance in the Building of the Erie Canal and Other Public Works”. NBER
Working Paper 10965 (2004).
Germán Ferro, A Lomo de Mula (Santaf
e de Bogotá: Fondo Cultural Cafetero, 1994).
Bent Flyvbjerg, Mette Skamris Holm and Søren Buhl, “Underestimating Costs in Public
Works Projects: Error or Lie?”, Journal of the American Planning Association 68:3 (2002),
279–95.
Robert Fogel, The Union Pacific Railroad: A Case in Premature Enterprise (Baltimore MD:
The Johns Hopkins Press, 1960).
R. M. Fraser, “Compensation for Extra Preliminary and General (P&G) Costs Arising
From Delays, Variations and Disruptions: The Palmiet Pumped Storage Scheme”,
Tunneling and Underground Space Technology 5:3 (1990), 205–16.
Anton Zacharias Helms Travels From Buenos Ayres, by Potosi, to Lima. With Notes by the
Translator, Containing Topographical Descriptions of the Spanish Possessions in South
America, Drawn from the Last and Best Authorities (London: Printed for R. Phillips, 1806).
Magdalena Jim
enez, “V
ıas de Comunicaci
on Desde el Virreinato Hasta la Aparici
on de la
Navegaci
on a Vapor por el Magdalena”, Historia Cr
ıtica 2 (2017), 118–25.
Clarence Jones, “The Commercial Growth of Peru”, Economic Geography 3:1 (1927), 23–49.
Roberto Junguito, “Las Finanzas Publicas en el Siglo XIX”, in Adolfo Meisel Roca and
Mari
a Teresa Rami
rez (eds), Economi
a Colombiana del Siglo XIX (Bogotá: Fondo de
Cultura Econo
mica, 2010), 41–134.
88 The Journal of Transport History 41(1)

Carl Henrik Langebaek and Jorge Morales (eds), Por Los Caminos Del Piedemonte: Una
Historia de Las Comunicaciones Entre Los Andes Orientales y Los Llanos, Siglos XVI a
XIX, Estudios Antropol
ogicos, no. 2, 1. (Santaf
e de Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes, 2000),
1–141.
Muriel Laurent, “El Contrabando en Colombia Durante el Siglo XIX (1821–1886): Fuentes
Documentales y Aspectos Metodol
ogicos Para Su Estudio”, Am
erica Latina en la
Historia Econ
omica 12:2 (2005), 155–77.
Frank Leonard, “‘Eighth Wonder of the World’: The Cariboo Wagon Road as British
Columbia’s First Megaproject”, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 27:1
(2014), 169–200.
Eliot Lord, Comstock Mining and Miners (Washington D.C.: Govt. Print. Off., 1883).
Angus Madisson, The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective (Paris: OECD, 2001).
Noel Maurer and Carlos Yu, The Big Ditch: How America Took, Built, Ran, and Ultimately
Gave Away the Panama Cana (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).
John Murra, “Herds and Herders in the Inca State”, in Anthony Leeds and Andrew Peter
Vayda (eds), Man, Culture, and Animals: The Role of Animals in Human Ecological
Adjustments (Washington D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of
Science, 1965), 185–216.
Jos
e Antonio Ocampo, Colombia y La Econom
ıa Mundial 1830–1910 (Bogotá: Universidad
de los Andes, Colombia, 2013).
Alfredo Ortega, Ferrocarriles Colombianos: La Ultima Experiencia Ferroviaria del Pais
1920–1930 (Bogotá: Imprenta Nacional, 1932).


Alvaro Pach
on and Mar
ıa Teresa Ram
ırez, La Infraestructura de Transporte en Colombia
Durante el Siglo XX (Bogotá: Banco de la Rep
ublica, 2006).
Marco Palacios, El Caf
e en Colombia, 1850–1970: Una Historia Econ
omica, Social y Pol
ıtica
(Tlalpan: El Colegio de M
exico, 2009).
Marco Palacios and Frank Safford, Colombia: Pa
ıs Fragmentado, Sociedad Dividida: Su
Historia (Bogotá: Grupo Editorial Norma, 2002).
Frank Safford, “El Problema de los Transportes en Colombia en el Siglo XIX”, in Adolfo
Meisel Roca and Mar
ıa Teresa Ram
ırez (eds), Econom
ıa Colombiana del Siglo XIX
(Bogotá: Banco de la Rep
ublica, 2010), 524–73.
Frank Safford, The Ideal of the Practical Colombia’s Struggle to Form a Technical Elite
(Austin TX: University of Texas Press, 1976).
Miguel Urrutia, “Precios y Salarios Urbanos en el Siglo XIX”, in Adolfo Meisel Roca and
Mari
a Teresa Rami
rez (eds), Economi
a Colombiana Del Siglo XIX (Bogotá: Banco de la
Rep
ublica, 2010), 7–40.
Roberto Velandia, “Todos los Caminos Conducen a Santa Fe”, in Pilar Moreno de Angel,
Jorge Orlando Melo and Mariano Useche Losada (eds), Caminos Reales de Colombia
(Bogotá: Fondo FEN Colombia, 1995), 129–56.
Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (New
York NY: W.W. Norton, 2011).
Oliver Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications (New York
NY: Free Press, 1975).
World Bank, Development Report: Infrastructure for Development (New York NY: Oxford
University Press, 1994).