THE CATSKILL TURNPIKE
So few writers have paid any attention to the influence of roads in the
development of our country that it is a great pleasure to find in
Francis Whiting Halsey's _The Old New York Frontier_,[41] a chapter on
the old Catskill Turnpike; through the kindness of the author it is
possible to present here this story of that strategic highway of old New
York:
"Before the Revolutionary War something of a road had been cut through
the woods from Otsego Lake southward along the Susquehanna, and other
primitive roads led to and from the lake; but these highways had almost
disappeared during the later years of the war, when Nature had done her
effective work of reclamation. The one leading from the lake southward
was improved in 1786 as far as Hartwick, and others were speedily taken
in hand. Further down the river efforts were made to establish
convenient communication with the Hudson, and out of this grew a road
which eventually became the great highway for a large territory. It was
called the Catskill Turnpike, and had its terminus on the Susquehanna at
Wattles's Ferry.[41a]
"This road, as a turnpike, properly dates from 1802, but the road itself
is much older. Its eastern end had been opened long before the
Revolution with a terminus in the Charlotte Valley. It seems then to
have been hardly more than a narrow clearing through the forest, what
farmers call a 'wood road,' or frontiersman a 'tote road.' It served as
a convenient route to the Susquehanna, because much shorter than the
older route by the Mohawk Valley. Over this road on horseback in 1769,
came Colonel Staats Long Morris and his wife, the Duchess of Gordon.
"After the war demands rose for a better road, and one was soon
undertaken with its terminus at Wattles's Ferry. This terminus appears
to have been chosen because the river here was deep enough to permit the
use of 'battoes' during the low water that prevailed in summer. By the
summer of 1788 the road was in passable condition. Alexander Harper and
Edward Paine in February, 1789, declared that they had been to 'a very
great expense in opening the roads from Catskill and the Hudson to the
Susquehanna River.' In the same year a petition was filed for a road
'from the Ouleout to Kyuga Lake.' The road to Cayuga Lake (Ithaca) made
slow progress, and in 1791 General Jacob Morris addressed to Governor
Clinton a letter which shows that it was then still to be undertaken.
Early in 1790 the State had taken the road to Catskill in charge. In
August, G. Gelston made up from surveys a map from Catskill 'running
westerly to the junction of the Ouleout Creek with the Susquehanna
River.' The country had been previously explored for the purpose by
James Barker and David Laurence.[42]
"In 1791 Sluman Wattles charged his cousin, Nathaniel Wattles, £4, 6_s._
for 'carting three barrells from your house to Catskill,' £1 for 'five
days work on the road,' and 15 shillings for 'inspecting road.' Besides
Nathaniel Wattles, Menad Hunt was interested in the work, and in 1792
the two men appealed to the state to be reimbursed for money paid out
above the contract price.[43] During this year the father of the late
Dr. Samuel H. Case, of Oneonta, emigrated to the upper Ouleout from
Colchester, Conn., with his seven brothers. They drove cattle and sheep
ahead of them, and consumed eight days in making the journey from the
Hudson River. Solomon Martin went over the road in the same year, using
Sluman Wattles's oxen, for which he was charged £1, 17_s._ He went to
Catskill, and was gone fifteen days. This road was only twenty-five feet
wide. In 1792 a regular weekly mail-route was established over it.
"These are among the many roads which were opened in the neighborhood
before the century closed--before the Catskill Turnpike, as a turnpike,
came into existence. Nearly every part of the town of Unadilla, then
embracing one-third of Otsego County, had been made accessible before
the year 1800. The pioneers had taken up lands all through the hill
country. But the needs of the settlers had not been fully met. All over
the State prevailed similar conditions. The demands that poured in upon
State and town authorities for road improvements became far in excess of
what could be satisfied. Everywhere fertile lands had been cleared and
sown to grain, but the crops were so enormous that they could neither be
consumed at home nor transported to market elsewhere. Professor McMaster
says that 'the heaviest taxes that could have been laid would not have
sufficed to cut out half the roads or build half the bridges that
commerce required.
"Out of this condition grew the policy of granting charters to turnpike
companies, formed by well-to-do land-owners, who undertook to build
roads and maintain them in proper condition for the privilege of
imposing tolls. Men owning land and possessed of ready money, were
everywhere eager to invest in these enterprises. They not only saw the
promise of dividends, but ready sales for their lands. At one time an
amount of capital almost equal to the domestic debt of the nation when
the Revolution closed was thus employed throughout the country. By the
year 1811, no fewer than 137 roads had been chartered in New York State
alone, with a total length of 4,500 miles and a total capital of
$7,500,000. About one-third of this mileage was eventually completed.
"Eight turnpikes went out from Albany, and five others joined Catskill,
Kingston, and Newburg with the Susquehanna and Delaware rivers. The
earliest of these five, and one of the earliest in the State, was the
Catskill and Susquehanna turnpike, that supplanted the primitive State
road to Wattles's Ferry. The old course was changed in several
localities, the charter permitting the stockholders to choose their
route. Among the names in the charter were John Livingston, Caleb Benton
(a brother of Stephen Benton), John Kortright, Sluman Wattles, and
Solomon Martin. The stock was limited to $12,000 in shares of $20 each.
"The road ran through lands owned by the stockholders. Little regard was
had for grades, as travellers well know. The main purpose was to make
the land accessible and marketable. The road was completed in 1802, and
soon became a famous highway to Central New York, and the navigable
Susquehanna, and so remained for more than a quarter of a century. It
was in operation four years earlier than the Great Western Turnpike,
connecting Albany with Buffalo and running through Cherry Valley.
Spafford in 1813 described it as 'the Appian Way turnpike,' in which it
seems the pride felt in it, likened as it thus was to one of the best
roads ever built by man--that Roman highway which still does service
after the lapse of more than 2,000 years. In one sense this turnpike was
like a Roman road: it followed straight lines from point to point
regardless of hills, obstacles being squarely faced and defied by these
modern men as by the old Romans.
"Ten toll-gates were set up along the line, with the rates as follows:
for twenty sheep and hogs, eight cents; for twenty horses and cattle,
twenty cents; for a horse and rider, five cents; for a horse and chaise,
twelve and one-half cents; for a coach or chariot, twenty-five cents;
for a stage or wagon, twelve and one-half cents. In 1804, Caleb Benton,
who lived in Catskill, was president of the corporation, and in 1805 the
stage business of the road was granted as a monopoly to David Bostwick,
Stephen Benton, Lemuel Hotchkiss, and Terence Donnelly. Two stages were
to be kept regularly on the road, the fare to be five cents per mile. A
stage that left Catskill Wednesday morning reached Unadilla Friday
night, and one that left Unadilla Sunday reached Catskill Tuesday. The
most prosperous period for the road was the ten years from 1820 to 1830.
"Two years after the road was built, Dr. Timothy Dwight, President of
Yale College, during one of his regular vacation journeys, passed over
it and stopped at Unadilla. He has left a full record of the journey.
Dr. Dwight, accustomed long to the comforts of life in New England, had
no sooner crossed the State line from Massachusetts to New York than he
observed a change. The houses became ordinary and ill repaired, and very
many of them were taverns of wretched appearance.
"For sixteen or eighteen miles, he saw neither church nor school-house.
Catskill contained about 100 houses, and much of the business was done
by barter. The turnpike to the Susquehanna he described as a 'branch of
the Greenwood turnpike from Hartford to Albany, commencing from Canaan
in Connecticut and passing to Wattles's Ferry on the Susquehanna. Thence
it is proposed to extend it to the county of Trumbull on the southern
shore of Lake Erie.' The road he thought 'well made.'
"Connecticut families were found settled along the line. Now he came
upon 'a few lonely plantations recently begun upon the road,' and then
'occasionally passed a cottage, and heard the distant sound of an axe
and of a human voice. All else was grandeur, gloom and solitude.' At
last after many miles of riding he reached a settlement 'for some miles
a thinly built village, composed of neat, tidy houses,' in which
everything 'indicated prosperity.' This was Franklin. Coming down the
Ouleout, the country, he said, 'wore a forbidding aspect, the houses
being thinly scattered and many of them denoted great poverty.'
"When Dr. Dwight reached Wattles's Ferry, the more serious trials of his
journey began. All the privations of life in a new country which he had
met on the road from Catskill at last had overtaxed his patience, and he
poured forth his perturbed spirit upon this infant settlement. When he
made a second visit a few years later he liked the place much better.
His first impressions are chronicled at some length. He says:
"'When we arrived at the Susquehanna we found the only inn-keeper, at
the eastern side of the river, unable to furnish us a dinner. To obtain
this indispensable article we were obliged therefore to cross the river.
The ferry-boat was gone. The inhabitants had been some time employed in
building a bridge, but it was unfinished and impassable. There was
nothing left us, therefore, but to cross a deep and rapid ford. Happily
the bottom was free from rocks and stones.'
"Dr. Dwight appears to have found no satisfactory stopping-place in
Unadilla, and proceeds to say:
"'About four miles from the ferry we came to an inn kept by a Scotchman
named Hanna. Within this distance we called at several others, none of
which could furnish us a dinner. I call them inns because this name is
given them by the laws of the State, and because each of them hangs out
a sign challenging this title. But the law has nicknamed them, and the
signs are liars.
"'It is said, and I suppose truly, that in this State any man who will
pay for an inn-keeper's license obtains one of course. In consequence of
this practice the number of houses which bear the appellation is
enormous. Too many of them are mere dramshops of no other use than to
deceive, disappoint and vex travellers and to spread little circles of
drunkenness throughout the State. A traveller after passing from inn to
inn in a tedious succession finds that he can get nothing for his horse
and nothing for himself.'
"The remedy he prescribed for this was to license 'only one inn where
there are five or six.' The evil was general. In 1810 the people of
Meredith made a formal and vigorous protest against the growth of
intemperance and crime as caused by public houses. There were ten hotels
in that town alone, besides a number of distilleries. Many citizens
banded themselves in behalf of order and decency, and their protest
abounded in an energy of language that would have delighted the soul of
Dr. Dwight. Of his further experience at Mr. Hanna's hotel, he says:
"'We at length procured a dinner and finding no house at a proper
distance where we could be lodged concluded to stay where we were. Our
fare was indeed bad enough, but we were sheltered from the weather. Our
inn-keeper besides furnishing us with such other accommodations as his
home afforded, added to it the pleasures of his company and plainly
considered himself as doing us no small favor. In that peculiar
situation in which the tongue vibrates with its utmost ease and
celerity, he repeated to us a series of anecdotes dull and vulgar in the
extreme. Yet they all contained a seasoning which was exquisite, for
himself was in every case the hero of the tale. To add to our amusement,
he called for the poems of Allan Ramsay and read several of them to us
in what he declared to be the true Scottish pronunciation, laughing
incessantly and with great self-complacency as he proceeded.'
"Dr. Dwight remarks that 'a new turnpike road is begun from the ferry
and intended to join the Great Western road either at Cayuga bridge or
Canandaigua. This route will furnish a nearer journey to Niagara than
that which is used at present.' We see from this what were the plans of
that day, as to the future central highway of New York State. Of
Unadilla Dr. Dwight says:
"'That township in which we now were is named Unadilla and lies in the
county of Otsego. It is composed of rough hills and valleys with a
handsome collection of intervales along the Susquehanna. On a
remarkably ragged eminence immediately north-west of the river, we saw
the first oaks and chestnuts after leaving the neighborhood of Catskill.
The intervening forests were beach, maple, etc. The houses in Unadilla
were scattered along the road which runs parallel with the river. The
settlement is new and appears like most others of a similar date. Rafts
containing each from twenty to twenty-five thousand feet of boards are
from this township floated down the Susquehanna to Baltimore. Unadilla
contained in 1800 eight hundred and twenty-three inhabitants.'[44]
"On September 27, 1804, Dr. Dwight left Mr. Hanna's inn and rode through
to Oxford. The first two miles of the way along the Susquehanna were
'tolerably good and with a little labor capable of being excellent.' He
continues:
"'We then crossed the Unadilla, a river somewhat smaller but
considerable longer (sic) than the Susquehanna proper, quite as deep
and as difficult to be forded. Our course to the river was south-west.
We then turned directly north along the banks of the Unadilla, and
travelling over a rugged hill, passed through a noble cluster of white
pines, some of which though not more than three feet in diameter, were,
as I judged, not less than 200 feet in height. No object in the
vegetable world can be compared with this.'
"Eleven years later, Dr. Dwight again passed over the turnpike on his
way to Utica. 'The road from Catskill to Oxford,' he said, 'I find
generally bad, as having been long neglected. The first twenty miles
were tolerable, the last twenty absolutely intolerable.' After noting
that in Franklin 'religion had extensively prevailed,' he wrote:
"'Unadilla is becoming a very pretty village. It is built on a
delightful ground along the Susquehanna and the number of houses,
particularly of good ones, has much increased. A part of the country
between this and Oxford is cultivated; a considerable part of it is
still a wilderness. The country is rough and of a high elevation.'
"In some reminiscences[45] which my father wrote in 1890, he described
the scenes along this road that were familiar to him in boyhood at
Kortright--1825 to 1835. The road was then in its most prosperous
period. It was not uncommon for one of the hotels, which marked every
few miles of the route, to entertain thirty or forty guests at a time.
The freight wagons were huge in size, drawn by six and eight horses, and
had wheels with wide tires. Stages drawn by four and six horses were
continually in use. Not infrequently came families bound for Ohio, where
they expected to settle--some of these Connecticut people, who helped to
plant the Western Reserve settlements. This vast traffic brought easy
prosperity to the people along the turnpike and built up towns and
villages. My father records the success of the Rev. Mr. McAuley's church
at Kortright--a place that has now retrograded so that it is only a
small hamlet, just capable of retaining a post office. But Mr.
McAuley's church at one time, more than sixty years ago, had five
hundred members, and was said to be the largest church society west of
the Hudson valley.
"A change occurred with the digging of the Erie Canal and the building
of the Erie Railway. Morever, in 1834 was built a turnpike from North
Kortright through the Charlotte Valley to Oneonta. The white man having
tried a route of his own over the hills, reverted to the route which the
red man had marked out for him ages before. Much easier was the grade by
this river road, and this fact exercised a marked influence on the
fortunes of the settlements along the olden line. Freight wagons were
drawn off and sent by the easier way. Stages followed the new turnpike
and the country between Wattles's Ferry and Kortright retrograded as
rapidly as it had formerly improved.[46]
"The building of the Catskill Turnpike really led to the founding of
Unadilla village on its present site. It had confined to this point a
growth which otherwise would probably have been distributed among other
points along the valley. Here was a stopping-place, with a river to be
crossed, horses to be changed, and new stages taken, and here had been
established the important market for country produce of Noble & Hayes.
Unadilla became what might be called a small but thriving inland river
port. Here lumber was sawed and here it came from mills elsewhere for
shipment along with farm products to Baltimore. Here grain was ground,
and here were three prosperous distilleries.
"The building of the turnpike along the Charlotte was not the only blow
that came to the western portion of the Catskill Road. Another and
permanent one came to the whole length of the turnpike when the Erie
Canal was built, followed later by the Erie Railroad. Otsego County, in
1832, had reached a population of 52,370, but with the Erie Canal in
operation it ceased to grow. At the present time the showing is
considerably less than it was in 1832, and yet several villages have
made large increases, the increase in Oneonta being probably tenfold.
"Contemporary with the Erie Canal was an attempt to provide the
Susquehanna with a canal. It became a subject of vast local interest
from Cooperstown to the interior of Pennsylvania. The scheme included a
railway, or some other method of reaching the Erie Canal from the head
of Otsego Lake. Colonel De Witt Clinton, Jr., son of the governor, made
a survey as far as Milford, and found that in nine miles there was a
fall of thirty feet, and that at Unadilla the fall from the lake was 150
feet, while in 110 miles from the lake it was 350 feet. In 1830 a new
survey showed that 144 miles out of 153 were already navigable, the
remaining distance requiring a canal. Some seventy locks would be needed
and sixty-five dams. Judge Page, while a member of Congress, introduced
a bill to aid slack-water navigation from Cooperstown to tide-water. It
was his opinion that the failure of the bill was due to the spread of
railroads.
"With the ushering in of the great railroad era, the Susquehanna Valley
saw started as early as 1830 many railroad projects which could save it
from threatened danger. Their aim was to connect the upper Susquehanna
with the Hudson at Catskill, and the Mohawk at Canajoharie. None ever
got beyond the charter stage. Strenuous efforts were afterward made to
bring the Erie from the ancient Cookoze (Deposit) to the Susquehanna at
a point above Oghwaga, but this also failed.
"Indeed it was not until after the Civil War that any railroad reached
the headwaters of the Susquehanna; but it was an agreeable sign of the
enterprise which attended the men of 1830 and following years that at
the period when the earliest railroad in this State, and one of the
earliest on this continent, had just been built from Albany to
Schenectady, serious projects existed for opening this valley to the
outer world. Even the great Erie project languished long in consequence
of business depression. It was not until 1845 that it was completed as
far as Middletown, and not until 1851 that it reached Dunkirk.
"Not even to the Erie was final supremacy on this frontier assured, but
the upper Susquehanna lands, more than those through which the Erie ran,
were doomed to a condition of isolation. Nature itself had decreed that
the great route of transportation in New York State was to run where the
great trail of the Iroquois for centuries had run--through the Mohawk
Valley. Along that central trail from Albany, 'the Eastern Door,' to
Buffalo, 'the Western door of the Long House,' the course of empire
westward was to take its way."