LOOKING TOWARD A RAILROAD
The locomotive having reached Utica--upon the completion of the Utica &
Schenectady Railroad, August 2, 1836--was not to be long content to make
that his western stopping point. The fever of railroad building was upon
Central New York. Railroads it must have; railroads it would have. But
railroad building was not the quick and comparatively simple thing then
that it is to-day. And it was not until nearly four years after he had
first poked his head into Utica that the iron horse first thrust his nose
into Syracuse, fifty-three miles further west. In fact the railroad from
this last point to Auburn already had been completed more than a
twelvemonth and but fifteen months later trains would be running all the
way from Syracuse to Rochester; with but a single change of cars, at
Auburn.
Upon the heels of this pioneer chain of railroads--a little later to
achieve distinction as the New York Central--came the building of a
railroad to the highly prosperous Lake Ontario port of Oswego--the
earliest of all white settlements upon the Great Lakes.
At first it was planned that this railroad to the shores of Ontario should
deflect from the Utica & Syracuse Railroad--whose completion had followed
so closely upon the heels of the line between Schenectady and Utica--near
Rome, and after crossing Wood Creek and Fish Creek, should follow the
north shore of Oneida Lake and then down the valley of the Oswego River.
Oswego is but 185 miles from Lewiston by water and it was then estimated
that it could be reached in twenty-four or twenty-five hours from New York
by this combined rail and water route.
Eventually however the pioneer line to Oswego was built out of Syracuse,
known at first as the Oswego and Syracuse Railroad; it afterwards became a
part of the Syracuse, Binghamton and New York and as a part of that line
eventually was merged, in 1872, into the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western
Railroad, which continues to operate it. This line of road led from the
original Syracuse station, between Salina and Warren Streets straight to
the waterside at Oswego harbor. There it made several boat connections;
the most important of these, the fleet of mail and passenger craft
operated by the one-time Ontario & St. Lawrence Steamboat Company.
The steamers of this once famous line played no small part in the
development of the North Country. They operated through six or seven
months of the year, as a direct service between Lewiston which had at that
time highway and then later rail connection with Niagara Falls and
Buffalo, through Ogdensburgh, toward which, as we shall see in good time,
the Northern Railroad was being builded, close to the Canada line from
Lake Champlain and the Central Vermont Railroad at St. Albans as an outlet
between Northern New England and the water-borne traffic of the Great
Lakes. The steamers of this line, whose names, as well as the names of
their captains, were once household words in the North Country were:
_Northerner_ Captain R. F. Child
_Ontario_ " H. N. Throop
_Bay State_ " J. Van Cleve
_New York_ " --------
_Cataract_ " R. B. Chapman
_British Queen_ " Laflamme
_British Empire_ " Moody
The first four of these steamers, each flying the American flag, were
deservedly the best known of the fleet. The _Ontario_, the _Bay State_ and
the _New York_ were built at French Creek upon the St Lawrence (now
Clayton) by John Oakes; the _Northerner_ was Oswego-built. They burned
wood in the beginning, and averaged about 230 feet in length and about 900
tons burthen. There were in the fleet one or two other less consequential
boats, among them the _Rochester_, which plied between Lewiston and
Hamilton, in the then Canada West, as a connecting steamer with the main
line. The steamer _Niagara_, Captain A. D. Kilby, left Oswego each Monday,
Wednesday and Friday evening at eight, passing Rochester the next morning
and arriving at Toronto at four p. m. Returning she would leave Toronto on
the alternating days at 8:00 p. m., pass Rochester at 5:30 a. m. and
arrive at Oswego at 10:00 a. m., in full time to connect with the Oswego &
Syracuse R. R. train for Syracuse, and by connection, to Albany and the
Hudson River steamers for New York. A little later Captain John S. Warner,
of Henderson Harbor, was the Master of the _Niagara_.
The "line boats," as the larger craft were known, also connected with
these through trains. In the morning they did not depart until after the
arrival of the train from Syracuse. In detail their schedule by 1850 was
as follows:
Lv. Lewiston 4 p.m.
" Rochester 10 p.m.
" Oswego 9 a.m.
" Sackett's Harbor 12 m.
" Ogdensburgh 7 a.m.
Ar. Montreal 6 p.m.
Lv. Montreal 9 a.m.
" Ogdensburgh 8 a.m.
" Kingston 4 p.m.
" Sackett's Harbor 9 p.m.
" Oswego 10 a.m.
" Rochester 6 p.m.
Ar. Lewiston 4 a.m.
Here for many years, before the coming of the railroad, was an agreeable
way of travel into Northern New York. These steamers, even with thirty
foot paddle-wheels, were not fast; on the contrary they were extremely
slow. Neither were they gaudy craft, as one might find in other parts of
the land. But their rates of fare were very low and their meals, which
like the berths, were included in the cost of the passage ticket, had a
wide reputation for excellence. Until the coming of the railroad into
Northern New York, the line prospered exceedingly. Indeed, for a
considerable time thereafter it endeavored to compete against the
railroad--but with a sense of growing hopelessness. And eventually these
once famous steamers having grown both old and obsolete, the line was
abandoned.
A rival line upon the north edge of Lake Ontario, the Richelieu & Ontario,
continued to prosper for many years, however, after the coming of the
railroad. Its steamers--the _Corsican_, the _Caspian_, the _Algerian_,
the _Spartan_, the _Corinthian_ and the _Passport_ best known, perhaps,
amongst them--ran from Hamilton, touching at Toronto, Kingston, Clayton,
Alexandria Bay, Prescott and Cornwall, through to Montreal, where
connections were made in turn for lower river ports. The last of these
boats continued in operation upon the St. Lawrence until within twenty
years or thereabouts ago.
It is worthy of note that the completion in 1829 of the first Welland
Canal began to turn a really huge tide of traffic from Lake Erie into Lake
Ontario, and for two decades this steadily increased. In 1850 Ontario bore
some 400,000 tons of freight upon its bosom, yet in the following year
this had increased to nearly 700,000 tons, valued at more than thirty
millions of dollars. In 1853 a tonnage mark of more than a million was
passed and the Lake then achieved an activity that it has not known since.
In that year the Watertown & Rome Railroad began its really active
operations and the traffic of Ontario to dwindle in consequence. Whilst
the cross-St. Lawrence ferry at Cape Vincent, the first northern terminal
of the Rome road, began to assume an importance that it was not to lose
for nearly forty years.
* * * * *
Steamboat travel was hardly to be relied upon in a country which suffers
so rigorous a winter climate as that of Northern New York. And highway
travel in the bitter months between November and April was hardly better.
A railroad was the thing; and a railroad the North Country must have. The
agitation grew for a direct line at least between Watertown, already
coming into importance as a manufacturing center of much diversity of
product, to the Erie Canal and the chain of separate growing railroads,
that by the end of 1844, stretched as a continuous line of rails all the
way from Albany--and by way of the Western and the Boston & Worcester
Railroads (to-day the Boston and Albany) all the way from Boston
itself--to Buffalo and Niagara Falls. Prosperity already was upon the
North Country. It was laying the foundations of its future wealth. It was
ordained that a railroad should be given it. The problem was just how and
where that railroad should be built. After a brief but bitter fight
between Rome and Utica for the honor of being the chief terminal of this
railroad up into the North Country, Rome was chosen; as far back as 1832.
Yet it was not until sixteen years later that the construction of the
Watertown & Rome Railroad, the pioneer road of Northern New York, was
actually begun. And had been preceded by a mighty and almost continuous
legislative battle in the old Capitol at Albany ... of which more in
another chapter.
In the meantime other railroads had been projected into the North Country.
The real pioneer among all of these was the Northern Railroad, which was
projected to run due west from Rouse's Point to Ogdensburgh, just above
the head of the highest of the rapids of the St. Lawrence and so at that
time at the foot of the easy navigation of Ontario, and, by way of the
Welland Canal, of the entire chain of Great Lakes.
The preliminary discussions which finally led to the construction of this
important early line also went as far back as 1829. Finally a meeting was
called (at Montpelier, Vt., on February 17, 1830) to seriously consider
the building of a railroad across the Northern Tier of New York counties,
from Rouse's Point, upon Lake Champlain, to Ogdensburgh, upon the St.
Lawrence. The promoters of the plan averred that trains might be operated
over the proposed line at fifteen miles an hour, that the entire journey
from Boston to Ogdensburgh might be accomplished in thirty-five hours.
There were, of course, many wise men who shook their heads at the rashness
of such prediction. But the idea fascinated them none the less; and
twenty-eight days later a similar meeting to that at Montpelier was held
at Ogdensburgh, to be followed a year later by one at Malone.
So was the idea born. It grew, although very slowly. Communication itself
in the North Country was slow in those days, even though the fine military
road from Sackett's Harbor through Ogdensburgh to Plattsburgh was a
tolerable artery of travel most of the year. Money also was slow. And men,
over enterprises so extremely new and so untried as railroads, most
diffident. For it must be remembered that when the promoters of the
Northern Railroad first made that outrageous promise of going from Boston
to Ogdensburgh in thirty-five hours, at fifteen miles an hour, the
railroad in the United States was barely born. The first locomotive--the
_Stourbridge Lion_, at Honesdale, Penn.--had been operated less than a
twelvemonth before. In the entire United States there were less than
twenty-three miles of railroad in operation. So wonder it not that the
plan for the Northern Railroad grew very slowly indeed; that it did not
reach incorporation until fourteen long years afterward, when the
Legislature of New York authorized David C. Judson and Joseph Barnes, of
St. Lawrence County, S. C. Wead, of Franklin County and others as
commissioners to receive and distribute stock of the Northern Railroad;
$2,000,000 all told, divided into shares of $50 each. The date of the
formal incorporation of the road was May 14, 1845. Its organization was
not accomplished, however, until June, 1845, when the first meeting was
held in the then village of Ogdensburgh, and the following officers
elected:
_President_, GEORGE PARISH, Ogdensburgh
_Treasurer_, S. S. WALLEY
_Secretary_, JAMES G. HOPKINS
_Chief Engineer_, COL. CHARLES L. SCHLATTER
_Directors_
J. Leslie Russell, Canton
Charles Paine, Northfield, Vt.
Hiram Horton, Malone
S. F. Belknap, Windsor, Vt.
J. Wiley Edmonds, Boston
Benjamin Reed, Boston
Anthony C. Brown, Ogdensburgh
Isaac Spalding, Nashua, N. H.
Lawrence Myers, Plattsburgh
Abbot Lawrence, Boston
T. P. Chandler, Boston
S. S. Lewis, Boston
Soon after the organization of the company, T. P. Chandler succeeded Mr.
Parish (who was for many years easily the most prominent citizen of
Ogdensburgh) as President, and steps were taken toward the immediate
construction of the line. After the inevitable preliminary contentions as
to the exact route to be followed, James Hayward made the complete surveys
of the line as it exists at present, while Colonel Schlatter, its chief
engineer and for a number of years its superintendent as well, prepared to
build it. Actual construction was begun in March, 1848, in the deep
cutting just east of Ogdensburgh. At the same time grading and the laying
of rail began at the east end of the road--at Rouse's Point at the foot of
Lake Champlain--with the result that in the fall of 1848 trains were in
regular operation between Rouse's Point and Centreville. A year later the
road had been extended to Ellenburgh; in June, 1850, to Chateaugay. On
October 1, 1850, trains ran into Malone. A month later it was finished and
open for its entire length of 117 miles. Its cost, including its equipment
and fixtures, was then placed at $5,022,121.31.
* * * * *
It is not within the province of this little book to set down in detail
the somewhat checkered career of the Northern Railroad. It started with
large ambitions--even before its incorporation, James G. Hopkins, who
afterwards became its Secretary, traveled through the Northern Tier and
expatiated upon its future possibilities in a widely circulated little
pamphlet. It was a road builded for a large traffic. So sure were its
promoters of this forthcoming business that they placed its track upon the
side of the right-of-way, rather than in the middle of it, in order that
it would not have to be moved when it came time to double-track the road.
The road was never double-tracked. For some years it prospered--very well.
It made a direct connection between the large lake steamers at the foot of
navigation at Ogdensburgh--it will be remembered that Ogdensburgh is just
above the swift-running and always dangerous rapids of the St.
Lawrence--and the important port of Boston. The completion of the line was
followed almost immediately by the construction of a long bridge across
the foot of Lake Champlain which brought it into direct connection with
the rails of the Central Vermont at St. Albans--and so in active touch
with all of the New England lines.
The ambitious hopes of the promoters of the Northern took shape not only
in the construction of the stone shops and the large covered depot at
Malone (built in 1850 by W. A. Wheeler--afterwards not only President of
the property, but Vice-President of the United States--it still stands in
active service) but in the building of 4000 feet of wharfage and elaborate
warehouses and other terminal structures upon the river bank at
Ogdensburgh. The most of these also still stand--memorials of the large
scale upon which the road originally was designed.
Gradually, however, its strength faded. Other rail routes, more direct and
otherwise more advantageous, came to combat it. Fewer and still fewer
steamers came to its Ogdensburgh docks--at the best it was a seasonal
business; the St. Lawrence is thoroughly frozen and out of use for about
five months out of each year. The steamers of the upper Lakes outgrew in
size the locks of the Welland Canal and so made for Buffalo--in increasing
numbers. The Northern Railroad entered upon difficulties, to put it
mildly. It was reorganized and reorganized; it became the Ogdensburgh
Railroad, then the Ogdensburgh & Lake Champlain, then a branch of the
Central Vermont and then upon the partial dismemberment of that historic
property, a branch of the Rutland Railroad. As such it still continues
with a moderate degree of success. In any narrative of the development of
transport in the North Country it must be forever regarded, however, as a
genuine pioneer among its railroads.
* * * * *
One other route was seriously projected from the eastern end of the state
into the North Country--the Sackett's Harbor and Saratoga Railroad Co.
which was chartered April 10, 1848. After desperate efforts to build a
railroad through the vast fastnesses of the North Woods--then a _terra
incognito_, almost impenetrable--and the expenditure of very considerable
sums of money, both in surveys and in actual construction, this
enterprise was finally abandoned. Yet one to-day can still see traces of
it across the forest. In the neighborhood of Beaver Falls, they become
most definite; a long cutting and an embankment reaching from it, a
melancholy reminder of a mighty human endeavor of just seventy years ago.
If this route had ever been completed, Watertown to-day would enjoy direct
rail communication with Boston, although not reaching within a dozen miles
of Albany. The Fitchburg, which always sought, but vainly, to make itself
an effective competitor of the powerful Boston & Albany, built itself
through to Saratoga Springs, largely in hopes that some day the line
through the forest to Sackett's Harbor would be completed. It was a vain
hope. The faintest chance of that line ever being built was quite gone. A
quarter of a century later the Fitchburg thrust another branch off from
its Saratoga line to reach the ambitious new West Shore at Rotterdam
Junction. That hope also faded. And the Fitchburg, now an important
division of the Boston & Maine, despite its direct route and short mileage
through the Hoosac Tunnel, became forever a secondary route across the
state of Massachusetts.
* * * * *
The reports of the prospecting parties of the Sackett's Harbor & Saratoga
form a pleasing picture of the Northern New York at the beginning of the
fifties. The company had been definitely formed with its chief offices at
80 Wall Street, New York, and the following officers and directors:
_President_, WILLIAM COVENTRY H. WADDELL, New York
_Supt. of Operations_, GEN. S. P. LYMAN, New York
_Treasurer_, HENRY STANTON, New York
_Secretary_, SAMUEL ELLIS, Boston
_Counsel_, SAMUEL BEARDSLEY, Utica
_Consulting Engineer_, JOHN B. MILLS, New York
_Directors_
Charles E. Clarke, Great Bend
Lyman R. Lyon, Lyons Falls
Robert Speir, West Milton
John R. Thurman, Chester
Zadock Pratt, Prattsville
Wm. Coventry H. Waddell, New York
P. Somerville Stewart, Carthage
E. G. Merrick, French Creek
James M. Marvin, Saratoga
Anson Thomas, Utica
Otis Clapp, Boston
Gen. S. P. Lyman, Utica
Henry Stanton, New York
Mr. A. F. Edwards received his appointment as Chief Engineer of the
company on March 10, 1852, and soon afterwards entered upon a detailed
reconnoissance of the territory embraced within its charter. He examined
closely into its mineral and timber resources and gave great attention to
its future agricultural and industrial possibilities. In the early part of
his report he says:
"In the latter part of September, 1852, I left Saratoga for the Racket
(Racquette) Lake, via Utica. On my way I noticed on the Mohawk that there
had been frost, and as I rode along in the stage from Utica to Boonville,
I saw that the frost had bitten quite sharply the squash vines and the
potatoes, the leaves having become quite black; but judge my surprise,
when three days later on visiting the settlement of the Racket, I found
the beans, cucumber vines, potatoes, &c., as fresh as in midsummer."
His examination of the territory completed, Mr. Edwards began the rough
location of the line of the new railroad. From Saratoga it passed westerly
to the valley of the Kayaderosseras, in the town of Greenfield, thence
north through Greenfield Center, South Corinth and through the "Antonio
Notch" in the town of Corinth to the Sacondaga valley, up which it
proceeded to the village of Conklingville, easterly through Huntsville and
Northville, through the town of Hope to "the Forks." From there it went up
the east branch of the Sacondaga, through Wells and Gilman to the isolated
town of Lake Pleasant. Spruce Lake and the headwaters of the Canada Creek
were threaded to the summit of the line at the Canada Lakes. The middle
and the western branches of the Moose River were passed near Old Forge and
the line descended the Otter Creek valley, crossing the Independence River
and down the Crystal Creek through and near Dayansville and Beaver Falls
to Carthage where for the first time it would touch the Black River.
From Carthage to Watertown it was planned that it would closely follow the
Black River valley, crossing the river three times, and leaving it at
Watertown for a straight run across the flats to Sackett's Harbor; along
the route of the already abandoned canal which Elisha Camp and a group of
associates had builded in 1822 and had left to its fate in 1832; in fact
almost precisely upon the line of the present Sackett's Harbor branch of
the New York Central. At the Harbor great terminal developments were
planned; an inner harbor in the village and an outer one of considerable
magnitude at Horse Island.
From Carthage a branch line was projected to French Creek, now the busy
summer village of Clayton. The route was to diverge from the main line
about one mile west of Great Bend thence running in a tangent to the
Indian River, about a mile and one-half east of Evan's Mills, where after
crossing that stream upon a bridge of two spans and at a height of sixty
feet would recross it two miles further on and then run in an almost
straight line to Clayton. Here a very elaborate harbor improvement was
planned, with a loop track and almost continuous docks to encircle the
compact peninsula upon which the village is built.
"At French Creek on a clear day," says Mr. Edwards, "the roofs of the
buildings at Kingston, across the St. Lawrence, can be seen with the naked
eye. All the steamers and sail vessels, up and down the river and lake,
pass this place and when the Grand Trunk Railroad is completed, it will be
as convenient a point as can be found to connect with the same."
All the while he waxes most enthusiastic about the future possibilities of
Northern New York, particularly the westerly counties of it. He calls
attention to the thriving villages of Turin, Martinsburgh, Lowville,
Denmark, Lyonsdale (I am leaving the older names as he gives them in his
report) and Dayansville, in the Black River valley.
"In the wealthy county of Jefferson," he adds, "are the towns of Carthage,
Great Bend, Felt's Mills, Lockport (now Black River), Brownville and
Dexter, with Watertown, its county seat, well located for a manufacturing
city, having ample water power, at the same time surrounded by a country
rich in its soil and highly cultivated to meet the wants of the
operatives. Watertown contains about 10,000 inhabitants and is the most
modern, city-like built, inland town in the Union, containing about 100
stores, five banks, cotton and woolen factories, six large flouring
mills, machine shops, furnaces, paper mills, and innumerable other
branches of business, with many first class hotels, among which the
'Woodruff House' may be justly called the Metropolitan of Western New
York."
In that early day, more than $795,000 had been invested in manufacturing
enterprises along the Black River, at Watertown and below. The territory
was a fine traffic plum for any railroad project. It seems a pity that
after all the ambitious dreams of the Sackett's Harbor & Saratoga and the
very considerable expenditures that were made upon its right-of-way, that
it was to be doomed to die without ever having operated a single through
train. The nineteen or twenty miles of its line that were put down, north
and west from Saratoga Springs, long since lost their separate identity as
a branch of the Delaware & Hudson system.