Darn that busybody DeWitt Clinton! His Erie Canal was one of the most spectacular successes of the age, but it was a disaster for the Southern Tier.
*Up until then the Chemung-Susquehanna River system was the great highway of western New York, with its connections to the Tidewater, Baltimore, and Chesapeake Bay. Bath, with its green squares and broad boulevards, was laid out to be the region’s great metropolis.
*That all slammed to a halt when the great canal opened in 1825. There were conventions and mob actions down here as crop prices and land values crashed instantly, leaving people with mortgages they could never pay off. The Land Office finally negotiated a revaluation.
*Meanwhile, little no-account shanty towns like Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester started to boom.
*Things improved for us when the Crooked Lake Canal opened in 1831, making Hammondsport a true port and putting Steuben-area farmers back into the game with a connection to the Erie system. Two years later Chemung Canal opened, eventually linking Corning and Elmira with Watkins Glen and Seneca Lake.
*All of that helped, but completion of the Erie Railroad in 1851 linked the Southern Tier with New York, Lake Erie, and Rochester. At that point, business truly started to revive.
*By 1868 those railroads had caught the attention of officials at the Brooklyn Flint Glass Works. The Erie gave Corning a major east-west mainline, and a major branch up to Rochester. The Fall Brook brought up coal, wood, sand, and charcoal from Pennsylvania. Raw materials could come in by rail, and finished products go out, and many costs were lower than they would be in Brooklyn. Corning could be a VERY attractive spot for relocation, and the decision was soon made.
*But while the railroads were a major consideration, another key factor was the canal. The Glass Works would lose some time, but save a good deal of money, shipping their factory equipment by canal.
*Barges loaded up at Brooklyn were towed up the Hudson to Albany, then transitioned into the Erie Canal as far as Montezuma, and junction with the Cayuga and Seneca Canal. Thence they made their way to Geneva and up Seneca Lake to Watkins, into the Chemung Canal, then a few rods on the Chemung River itself to Monkey Run and their new home along the waterfront of the Southside… just where so many of us recall the Glass Works always being.
*And that was in 1868 – exactly 150 years ago! Brooklyn Flint Glass Works became Corning Flint Glass Works, then Corning Glass Works, the Corning Incorporated (but still CGW on the stock exchange).
*To celebrate the sesquicentennial, GlassBarge (from Corning Musuem of Glass) and canal schooner Lois McClure (from Lake Champlain Maritime Museum) set out from Brooklyn back in May, accompanied by 1930 tug W. O. Ecker and 1964 tug C. L. Churchill. Like their predecessors they traveled up to Albany, but this time went the enture length of the Erie Canal to Buffalo, before reversing course to pick up the Cayuga-Seneca Canal, heading for Geneva, Seneca Lake, and Watkins Glen – as far as you can get, nowadays, by barge – to complete their odyssey.
*Art Cohn of Lake Champlain Maritime Museum observes that the new company’s arrival by a line of barges apparently didn’t attract much attention in Corning, though of course we now know that it was a historical thunderbolt. But this year’s little flotilla should get more notice as it opens to the public, at Watkins, from 11 to 6 on Friday through Sunday, September 14-16. I wouldn’t miss it. Maybe I’ll see you there.