THE R. W. & O. PROSPERS--AND EXPANDS
In the mid-seventies the young city of Watertown was entering upon a rare
era in which culture and great prosperity were to be blended. The men who
walked its pleasant maple-shaded streets were real men, indeed: the Flower
brothers--George W., Anson R. and Roswell P.--George B. Phelps, Norris
Winslow, the Knowlton brothers--John C. and George W.--Talcott H. Camp,
George A. Bagley, these were the men who were the town's captains of
industry of that day. An earlier generation had passed away; Norris
Woodruff, O. V. Brainard, Orville Hungerford; these men had played their
large parts in the upbuilding of Watertown and were gone or else living in
advanced years. A new generation of equal energy and ability had come to
replace them. Roswell P. Flower was upon the threshold of that remarkable
career in Wall Street that was to make him for a time its leader and give
him the large political honor of becoming Governor of the State of New
York. His brother, George W., first Mayor of Watertown, was tremendously
interested in each of the city's undertakings. George B. Phelps had risen
from the post of Superintendent of the old Potsdam & Watertown to be one
of the town's richest men. He had a city house in New York--a handsome
"brownstone front" in one of the "forties"--and in his huge house in Stone
Street, Watertown, the luxury of a negro valet, John Fletcher, for many
years a familiar figure upon the streets of the town.
From the pulpit of the dignified First Presbyterian Church in Washington
Street, the venerable Dr. Isaac Brayton had now retired; his place was
being filled by Dr. Porter, long to be remembered in the annals of that
society. Dr. Olin was about entering old Trinity, still in Court Street.
Into the ancient structure of the Watertown High School, in State Street,
the genial and accomplished William Kerr Wickes was coming as principal.
The Musical Union was preparing for its record run of _Pinafore_ in
Washington Hall. And in the old stone cotton factory on Beebee's Island,
Fred Eames was tinkering with his vacuum air brake, little dreaming of the
tragic fate that was to await him but a few years later; more likely,
perhaps, of the great air brake industry to which he was giving birth and
which, three decades later, was to take its proper place among the town's
chief industries. Paper manufacturing, as it is known to-day in the North
Country, was then a comparatively small thing; there were few important
mills outside of those of the Knowltons or the Taggarts--the clans of
Remington, of Herring, of Sherman and of Anderson were yet to make their
deep impress upon the community.
Carriage making was then a more important business than that of paper
making. The very thought of the motor-car was as yet unborn and
Watertonians reckoned the completion of a new carriage in the town in
minutes rather than in hours. It made steam engines and sewing machines.
All in all it created a very considerable traffic for its railroad--in
reality for its railroads, for in 1872 a rival line had come to contest
the monopoly of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh; of which more in good
time.
* * * * *
As went Watertown, so went the rest of the North Country. It was a brisk,
prosperous land, where industry and culture shared their forces. There was
a plenitude of manufacturing even outside of Watertown, whilst the mines
at Keene and Rossie had reopened and were shipping a modest five or six
cars a day of really splendid red ore. People worked well, people thought
well. The excellent seminaries at Belleville, at Adams, at Antwerp and at
Gouverneur reflected a general demand for an education better than the
public schools of that day might offer. The young St. Lawrence University
up at Canton, after a hard beginning fight, was at last on its way to its
present day strength and influence.
Northern New Yorkers traveled. They traveled both far and near. Even
distant Europe was no sealed book to them. There were dozens of fine
homes, even well outside of the towns and villages, which boasted their
Steinway pianos and whose young folk, graduated from Yale or Mount
Holyoke, spoke intelligently with their elders of Napoleon III or of the
charms of the boulevards of Paris.
* * * * *
In the upbuilding of this prosperous era the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh
had played its own large part. By 1875 it was nearly a quarter of a
century old. It was indeed an extremely high grade and prosperous
property, the pride, not only of Watertown, which had been so largely
responsible for its construction, but indeed of the entire North Country.
It had, as we have already seen, as far back as 1866, succeeded in
thrusting a line into Oswego, thirty miles west of Richland. After which
it felt that it needed an entrance into Syracuse, then as now, a most
important railroad center. To accomplish this entrance it leased, in 1875,
the Syracuse Northern Railroad, and then gained at last a firm two-footed
stand upon the tremendous main line of the New York Central & Hudson River
Railroad. It continued to maintain, of course, its original connection at
Rome--its long stone depot there still stands to-day, although far removed
from the railroad tracks. Yet one, in memory at least, may see it as the
brisk business place of yore, with the four tracks of the Vanderbilt trail
curving upon the one side of it and the brightly painted yellow cars of
the R. W. & O. waiting upon the other. The Rome connection gave the road
direct access to Boston, New York, and to the East generally; that at
Syracuse made the journey from Northern New York to western points much
easier and more direct, than it had been through the Rome gateway. It was
logical and it was strategic. And it is possible that had the Rome,
Watertown & Ogdensburgh been content to remain satisfied with its system
as it then existed, a good deal of railroad history that followed after,
would have remained unwritten.
* * * * *
The railroad scheme that finally led to the building of the Syracuse
Northern had been under discussion since 1851, the year of the completion
of the Watertown & Rome Railroad. Yet, largely because of the paucity of
good sized intermediate towns upon the lines of the proposed route, the
plan for a long time had languished. In the late sixties it was
successfully revived, however, and the Syracuse Northern Railroad
incorporated, early in 1870, with a capital stock of $1,250,000 and the
following officers:
_President_, ALLEN MUNROE
_Secretary_, PATRICK H. AGAN
_Treasurer_, E. B. JUDSON
_Engineer_, A. C. POWELL
_Directors_
Allen Munroe, Syracuse
E. W. Leavenworth, Syracuse
E. B. Judson, Syracuse
Patrick Lynch, Syracuse
Frank H. Hiscock, Syracuse
John A. Green, Syracuse
Jacob S. Smith, Syracuse
Horace K. White, Syracuse
Elizur Clark, Syracuse
Garret Doyle, Syracuse
William H. Canter, Brewerton
James A. Clark, Pulaski
Orin R. Earl, Sandy Creek
The road once organized found a lively demand for its shares. Its largest
investor was the city of Syracuse, which subscribed for $250,000 worth of
its bonds. The first depot of the new line in the city that gave it its
birth was in Saxon Street, up in the old town of Salina. From there it was
that Denison, Belden & Company began the construction of the railroad. It
was not a difficult road to build, easy grades and but three bridges--a
small one at Parish and two fairly sizable ones at Brewerton and at
Pulaski--to go up, so it was finished and opened for traffic in the fall
of 1871--which was precisely the same year that the New York Central
opened its wonderful Grand Central Depot down on Forty-second Street, New
York. The line ran through from Syracuse to Sandy Creek, now Lacona. It
started off in good style, operating two passenger express trains, an
accommodation and two freights each day in each direction. At the
beginning it made a brave showing for itself, and soon after it was open
it built for itself a one-storied brick passenger station across from the
New York Central's, then new, depot in Syracuse, and at right angles to
it. That station still stands but is now used as the Syracuse freight
station of the American Railway Express.
E. H. Bancroft was the first superintendent of the Syracuse Northern, C.
C. Morse, the second, and J. W. Brown, the third. J. Dewitt Mann was the
accounting officer and paymaster. The road never attained to a long
official roster of its own, however. Within a twelvemonth after its
opening the prosperous Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh, having already seen
the advantages of a two-footed connection with the New York Central,
planned its purchase. The Syracuse road, having failed to become the
financial success of which its promoters had hoped, this act was easily
accomplished. The Sheriff of Onondaga County assisted. In 1875 there was a
foreclosure sale and the Syracuse Northern ceased to live thereafter, save
as a branch to Pulaski. A few years later the six miles of track between
that town and Sandy Creek were torn up and abandoned. The old road-bed is
still in plain sight, however, for a considerable distance along the line
of the state highway to Watertown as it leads out of Pulaski, while the
abutments of the former high railroad bridge over the Salmon River still
show conspicuously in that village.
* * * * *
With its system fairly well rounded out, the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh
began the intensive perfection of its service. It built, in 1874, the
first section of the long stone freight-house opposite the passenger
station--so long a landmark of Watertown--from stone furnished by Lawrence
Gage, of Chaumont. Mr. Moak, the Superintendent of the road at that time,
was criticized for this expenditure. As a matter of fact it was necessary
not only to twice enlarge it quite radically, but to build a relief
transfer station at the Junction before the stone freight-house was
finally torn down to make room for the present passenger station at
Watertown.
Between the old freight-shed and the old passenger station there ran for
many years but a single passenger track, curving all the way, and beside
it the long platform, which was protected from the elements by a canopy,
which in turn, had a canopied connection with the waiting-room; at that
time still in the wing or original portion of the station; the main or
newer portion, being occupied by the restaurant, which had passed from the
hands of Col. Dunton into those of Silas Snell, Watertown's most famous
cornet player of that generation.
At Watertown the Cape Vincent train would lay in at the end of the
freight-house siding, and, because the Coffeen Street crossover had not
then been constructed, would back in and out between the passenger station
and the Watertown Junction, a little over a mile distant. Watertown
Junction was still a point of considerable passenger importance. Long
platforms were placed between the tracks there and passengers destined
through to the St. Lawrence never went up into the main passenger station
at all, but changed at that point to the Cape train.
The Thousand Islands were beginning to be known as a summer resort of
surpassing excellence. The famous Crossmon House at Alexandria Bay was
already more than two decades old. O. G. Staples had just finished that
nine-days-wonder, the Thousand Island House, and plans were in the making
for the building of the Round Island Hotel (afterwards the Frontenac) and
other huge hostelries that were to make social history at the St.
Lawrence, even before the coming of the cottage and club-house era.
* * * * *
It will be recalled that from the first the R. W. & O. developed excellent
docking facilities at Cape Vincent. At the outset it had builded the large
covered passenger station upon the wharf there, whose tragic destruction
we have already witnessed. Beyond this were the freight-sheds and the
grain elevator. For Cape Vincent's importance in those days was by no
means limited to the passenger travel, which there debouched from the
trains to take the steamers to the lower river points, or even that which
all the year around made its tedious way across the broad river to
Kingston, twenty-two miles away.
The _Lady of the Lake_ passed out of existence some six or seven years
after the inauguration of the Kingston ferry in connection with the trains
into the Cape. She was replaced by the steamer _Pierrepont_--the first of
this name--which was built on Wolfe Island in the summer of 1856 and went
into service in the following spring. In that same summer of 1857 the
canal was dug through the waistline girth of Wolfe Island, and a short and
convenient route established through it, between Cape Vincent and
Kingston--some twelve or thirteen miles all told, as against nearly twice
that distance around either the head or the foot of the island.
It was a pleasant ride through the old Wolfe Island canal. I can easily
remember it, myself, the slow and steady progress of the steamboat through
the rich farmlands and truck-gardens, the neatly whitewashed highway
bridges, swinging leisurely open from time to time to permit of our
progress. It is a great pity that the ditch was ever abandoned.
The first _Pierrepont_ was not a particularly successful craft and it was
supplemented in 1864 by the _Watertown_, which gradually took the brunt of
the steadily increasing traffic across the St. Lawrence at this point. The
ferry grew steadily to huge proportions and for many years a great volume
of both passengers and freight was handled upon it. It is a fact worth
noting here, perhaps, that the first through shipment of silk from the
Orient over the newly completed transcontinental route of the Canadian
Pacific Railway was made into New York, by way of the Cape Vincent ferry
and the R. W. & O. in the late fall of 1883.
* * * * *
With the business of this international crossing steadily increasing, it
became necessary to keep two efficient steamers upon the route and so the
second _Pierrepont_ was builded, going into service in 1874. At about that
time the _Watertown_ ceased her active days upon the river and the lake
and was succeeded by the staunch steamer _Maud_. Here was a staunch craft
indeed, built upon the Clyde somewhere in the late fifties or the early
sixties, and shipped in sections from Glasgow to Montreal, where she was
set up for St. Lawrence service, in which she still is engaged, under the
name of the _America_. Her engines for many years were of a peculiar
Scotch pattern, by no means usual in this part of the world, and
apparently understood by no one other than Billy Derry, for many years her
engineer. Occasionally Derry would quarrel with the owners of the _Maud_
and quit his job. They always sent their apologies after him, however. No
one else could run the boat, and they were faced with the alternative of
bowing to his whims or laying up the steamer.
Yet, as I have already intimated, the passenger traffic was but a small
part of Cape Vincent's importance through three or four great decades. The
ferry carried mail, freight and express as well--the place was ever an
important ferry crossing, a seat of a custom house of the first rank. In
summer the steamer acted as ferry, for many years crossing the Wolfe
Island barrier four times daily, through three or four miles of canal,
which some time along in the early nineties was suffered to fill up and
was abandoned in 1892. In midwinter mail and freight and passengers alike
crossed in speed and a real degree of fine comfort in great four-horse
sleighs upon a hard roadway of thick, thick ice. It was between seasons,
when the ice was either forming or breaking and sleighs as utter an
impossibility as steamboats that the real problem arose. In those times of
the year a strange craft, which was neither sled nor boat, but a
combination of both, was used. It went through the water and over the ice.
Yet the result was not as easy as it sounds. More than one passenger paid
his dollar to go from Cape Vincent to Kingston, for the privilege of
pushing the heavy hand sled-boat over the ice, getting his feet wet in the
bargain.
* * * * *
Into the many vagaries of North Country weather, I shall not enter at this
time. In a later chapter we shall give some brief attention to them. It
is enough here to say that a man who could fight a blizzard, coming in
from off Ontario, and keep the line open could run a railroad anywhere
else in the world. In after years I was to see, myself, some of these rare
old fights; Russell plows getting into the drifts over their necks
around-about Pulaski and Richland and Sandy Creek, seemingly half the
motive power off the track. Yet these were no more than the road has had
since almost the very day of its inception.
Once, in the midwinter of 1873, we had a noble old wind--the North Country
has a way of having noble old winds, even to-day--and the huge spire of
the First Presbyterian Church in Washington Street, Watertown, came
tumbling down into the road, smashed into a thousand bits, and seemingly
with no more noise than the sharp slamming of a blind.
That night--it was the evening of the fifteenth of January--the railroad
in and about Watertown nearly collapsed. Trains were hugely delayed and
many of them abandoned. The _Watertown Times_ of the next day, naIvely
announced:
"Conductor Sandiforth didn't come home last night and missed a good deal
by not coming. He spent the evening with a party of shovelers working his
way from Richland to Pierrepont Manor. Conductor Aiken followed him up
with the night train but he couldn't pass him, and so both trains arrived
here at 9:30 this (Thursday) morning."
Here Conductor Lew Sandiforth first comes into our picture and for a
moment I shall interrupt my narrative to give a bit of attention to him.
He is well worth the interruption of any narrative. We had many pretty
well-known conductors on the old R. W. & O.--but none half so well-known
as Lew Sandiforth. He was the wit of the old line, and its pet beau. It
was said of him, that if there was a good looking woman on the afternoon
train up to Watertown, Lew would quit taking tickets somewhere north of
Sandy Creek. The train then could go to the Old Harry for all he cared. He
had his social duties to perform. He was not one to shirk such
responsibilities.
In those days a railroad conductor was something of an uncrowned king,
anyway. His pay was meager, but ofttimes his profits were large. One of
these famous old ticket punchers upon the Rome road lived at the Woodruff
House, in Watertown, throughout the seventies. His wage was seventy-five
dollars a month, but he paid ninety dollars a month board for his wife and
himself and kept a driver and a carriage in addition. No questions were
asked. The road, on the whole, was glad to get its freight and its ticket
office revenues. Even these last were nothing to brag about. It was a poor
sort of a public man in those days who could not have his wallet lined
with railroad annual passes. A large proportion of the passengers upon the
average train rode free of any charge. Sometimes this attained a
scandalous volume. Away back in 1858, I find the Directors of the Potsdam
& Watertown resolving that no officer of their company "shall give a free
pass for _more_ than one trip over the road to any one person, except
officers of other railroad companies; and that an account of all free
passes taken up shall be entered by the conductors in their daily returns
with the name of the person passed and the name of the person who gave the
pass, and the Superintendent shall submit statement thereof to each
meeting of the Board." Moreover, he was requested to notify the conductors
not to pass any persons without a pass except the Directors and Secretary
of the company, and their families, the roadmaster, paymaster, station
agents, and "persons who the conductors think are entitled to charity."
* * * * *
Despite obstacles to its full earning power such as this, the Rome,
Watertown & Ogdensburgh prospered ... and progressed. Forever it was
planning new frills to add to its operation. In 1865 it had placed a
through Wagner sleeping-car in service between Watertown and New York. In
1875 this was an established function, leaving Watertown on the 6:30 train
each evening and arriving in New York at 7:55 the next morning; returning
it left New York each evening at six, and Albany at 11:40, and was in
Watertown at 9:05 the next morning. A later management of the R. W. & O.
in a fit of economy discontinued this service, and for more than twenty
years the North Country stood in line for sleeping-car berths at Utica
station, while it fought for the restoration of its sleeping-cars. These
cars eventually came back, but not regularly until 1891, when the New York
Central took over the property and put its up-to-date traffic methods upon
it once again.
The local management of the mid-seventies--composed almost entirely of
Watertown men--was not content to stop with the through sleeping cars
between their chief town and New York. They finally instructed H. H.
Sessions, their Master Mechanic, down in the old shops at Rome, to build
two wonderful new cars for their line, "the likes of which had never been
seen before." Mr. Sessions approached his new task with avidity. He was a
born car-builder, in after years destined to take charge of the motive
power department of the International & Great Northern Railway, at
Palestine, Texas, and then, in January, 1887, to become Manager of the
great Pullman car works at Pullman, Ill., just outside of Chicago. For six
years he held this position, afterwards resigning it to enter into
business for himself. The first vestibuled trains in which the platforms
were enclosed, were built under his supervision under what are known
to-day as the "Sessions Patents." He was indeed an inventive genius, and
also designed the first steel platforms and other very modern devices in
progressive car construction.
Sessions produced two sleeping-cars for the old Rome road. The "likes of
them" had never been seen before, and never will be seen again. They were
named the _St. Lawrence_ and the _Ontario_, and, despite the fact that
they depended upon candle-light as their sole means of illumination, they
were wonderfully finished in the rarest of hard-woods. Alternately they
were sleeping-cars and parlor-cars. At the first they were distinguished
by the fact that they possessed no upper-berths, their mattresses, pillows
and linen being carried in closets at either end of the car.
* * * * *
These cars at one time were placed in service between Syracuse, Watertown
and Fabyan's, N. H., passing enroute through Norwood, Rouse's Point and
Montpelier. One of them was in charge of Ed. Frary, the son of the
General Ticket Agent of the R. W. & O. at that time, and the other in
charge of L. S. Hungerford, who originally came from Evan's Mills. This
was the Hungerford, who to-day is Vice-President and General Manager of
the Pullman Company, at Chicago. A third or "spare" car was afterwards
purchased from the Pullman Company and renamed the _DeKalb_.
Because of the limited carrying capacity of these R. W. & O. sleeping-cars
they were never profitable. They did a little better when they were in day
service as parlor-cars. One of Mr. Richard Holden's most vivid memories is
of one of these cars coming into Watertown from the south on the afternoon
train, which would halt somewhere near the Pine Street cutting to slip it
off, preparatory to placing it on the Cape train at the Junction.
"I remember," he says, "how proud the late Frank Cornish was in riding
down the straight on the first drawing-room car, with his hands on the
brakewheel. He was a brakeman at that time. Afterwards he was promoted to
baggageman and then to conductor, having the run on Number One and Number
Seven for many years, afterwards conducting a cigar-stand in the Yates
Hotel at Syracuse until he died."
When hard times came upon the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh these cars
were laid up. Once in later years, under the Parsons management, they were
renamed the _Cataract_ and the _Niagara_, and operated in the Niagara
Falls night trains. But again, they proved too much of a financial drag,
and they were finally converted into day-coaches. There was another
parlor-car, the _Watertown_. Eventually this became the private-car of Mr.
H. M. Britton, General Manager of the R. W. & O., while the others
remained day coaches; still retaining, however, their wide plate-glass
windows and their general appearance of comfortable ease.
* * * * *
Here indeed was the golden age of the Rome road. Its bright, neat, yellow
cars, its smartly painted and trimmed engines all bespoke the existence of
a prosperous little rail carrier, that might have left well enough alone.
But, seemingly it could not. There is a man living in the western part of
this state, who recalls one fine day there in the mid-seventies, when Mr.
Massey--the President of the road, came walking out of the Watertown
station, talking all the time to Mr. Moak, its General
Superintendent--came over to him:
"We're going to be a real railroad at last, John," said he. "We're going
through to Niagara Falls upon our own rails and get into the trunk-line
class."
He was giving expression to a dream of years. A moment ago and we were
speaking of the operation through two or three summers of sleeping-cars
between Watertown and the White Mountains over the R. W. & O., the
Northern (at that time, already become the Ogdensburgh & Lake Champlain),
the Central Vermont, the Montpelier and Wells River, and the Portland and
Ogdensburgh. The officers of the Rome road felt that, if they could bridge
the gap existing between the terminals of their line at Oswego, and go
through to Suspension Bridge or Buffalo, where there were plenty of
competing lines through to Chicago and the West, that they could both
enter upon the competitive business of carrying western freight to the
Atlantic seaboard, and at the same time stand independent of the New York
Central. Eventually their idea was to take a concrete form, but again I
anticipate.
* * * * *
In that brisk day there was, in the slow and laborious process of building
a railroad, leading due west from Oswego. It was called the Lake Ontario
Shore Railroad, and its construction was indeed a laborious process. For
many years it came to an end just eighteen miles beyond Oswego. Finally it
reached the little village of Ontario, fifty-one miles beyond. And there
stopped dead. If it had forever been halted there, it would have been a
good thing. Its promoters were both industrious and persistent, however.
They chose to overlook the fact that the narrow territory, that they
sought to thread, promised small local traffic returns for many years to
come; a thin strip it was between the main line of the New York Central
and the south shore of Lake Ontario, and although nearly 150 miles in
length, never more than twelve or fifteen in width, and without any
sizable communities. The prospect of a profitable traffic, originating in
so thin a strip, was small indeed.
The prospectors of the Lake Ontario Shore Railroad did not see it that
way. They stressed the fact that at Sterling they would intersect the
Southern Central (now the Lehigh Valley), at Sodus the Northern Central
(now the Pennsylvania), at Charlotte; the port of Rochester, the Rochester
& State Line (now the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh) all in addition to
the many valuable connections to be made at the Niagara River. Yet for a
considerable time after the road had been pushed through Western New
York, it came to a dead stop at Lewiston. Its original terminal can still
be seen in that small village.
It was then thought possible and feasible to build a railroad bridge
across the Niagara and the international boundary between Lewiston and
Queenstown, in competition with the Suspension Bridge, which from the very
moment of its opening in 1849 had been an overwhelming success. The
energetic group of Oswego men who had promoted the building of the Lake
Ontario Shore, hoped to duplicate the success of the Suspension Bridge
there at Lewiston. They saw that small frontier New York town transformed
into a real railroad metropolis.
"And what a line we shall have, running right up to it!" they argued.
"Seventy-three out of our seventy-six miles, west of the Genesee River, as
straight as the proverbial ruler-edge; and a maximum gradient of but
twenty-six feet to the mile! What opportunities for fast--and efficient
operation!"
They had capitalized their line at $4,000,000 and in October, 1870, when I
first find official mention of it, they had expended $54,300 upon it. Its
officers at that time were:
_President_, GILBERT MOLLISON, Oswego
_Treasurer_, LUTHER WRIGHT, Oswego
_Secretary_, HENRY L. DAVIS, Oswego
_Engineer_, ISAAC S. DOANE, Oswego
_Directors_
Luther Wright, Oswego
Alanson S. Page, Oswego
Fred'k T. Carrington, Oswego
Gilbert Mollison, Oswego
Reuben F. Wilson, Wilson
Joseph L. Fowler, Ransonville
Oliver P. Scovell, Lewiston
George I. Post, Fairhaven
William O. Wood, Red Creek
Burt Van Horne, Lockport
James Brackett, Rochester
D. F. Worcester, Rochester
* * * * *
It is needless to say that the railroad bridge was never thrust across the
Niagara at Lewiston. That project died "a'borning." And so, almost, did
the Lake Ontario Shore Railroad. As I have just said, the building of the
road finally was halted at Ontario, fifty-one miles west of Oswego.
Finally, by tremendous effort and the injection of some capital from the
wealthy city of Rochester into the project it was brought through in 1875
as far as Kendall, a miserable little railroad, wretched and woe-begone
with its sole rolling stock consisting of two second-hand locomotives, two
passenger-cars and some fifty or sixty freight-cars.
In the long run, just as most folk had anticipated from the beginning, it
was the wealthy and prosperous Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh that took
over the Lake Ontario Shore and completed it; in 1876 as far as Lewiston,
and a year or two later up the face of the Niagara escarpment to
Suspension Bridge and the immensely valuable connections there. The
merger, itself, was consummated in the midsummer of 1875. To reach the
tracks of the new connecting link, from those of the old road, it was
necessary not only to build an exceedingly difficult little tunnel under
the hill, upon which the Oswego Court House stands, but to bridge the wide
expanse of the river just beyond, a tedious and expensive process, which
occupied considerably more than a twelvemonth.
All of this was not done until 1876 and by that time disaster threatened.
The Rome road had gone quite too far. Times were growing very hard once
again. A tight money market threatened; the storm of '73 had been passed
but that of '77 was still ahead. It began to be a question whether the R.
W. & O. could weather the large obligations that it had assumed when it
had absorbed the Lake Ontario Shore. Traffic did not come off the new
line; not, at least, in any considerable or profitable quantities. It
defaulted on the interest payments of its bonds.
There was the beginning of disaster. The Rome road management realized
this. They cut their dividends a little, and then to nothing. Watertown
was staggered. For a long term of years up to 1870 the road had paid its
ten per cent annual dividend with astonishing regularity. In that year it
dropped a little--to eight per cent--the next year, to seven, and then in
the panic year of 1873 to but three and one-half. The following year it
had returned, with increasing good times, to seven. In the fiscal year of
1874-75 the Directors of the property had voted six and one-half. That was
the end. The cancer of the Lake Ontario Shore was upon the parent
property. The strong old R. W. & O. had permitted the default of the
interest payments upon the bonds of their leased property. Confusion ruled
among the men in the depot at Watertown. They were dazed with impending
disaster.