While real estate is proverbially about location, community growth and economic development is often about transportation. Steuben County got its start and grew thanks to river transportation, then crashed when the Erie Canal rerouted the traffic.
We didn’t really recover well until the Erie Railroad main line came through in the early 1850s, quickly followed by its Rochester branch. We can see the impact of this new technology from the fact that there are two cities and 14 incorporated villages in Steuben County – and except for Hammondsport, every one of them was on the Erie Railroad.
Railroads made enough of an impact to leave their marks on our modern-day maps. In addition to the Erie, our other major line was the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western, or DL&W… the two lines merged in 1960 to form the Erie-Lackawanna. This helps explain why Bath has an Erie Avenue, a Delaware Avenue, a Lackawanna Street, and a Railroad Avenue. Wayland has Lackawanna Street AND Lackawanna Avenue.
Canisteo has Depot Street, and Almond (Town of Hornellsville) has Depot Road, while Cameron has Depot Street and Railroad Street.
What we now call Denison Parkway in Corning used to be Erie Avenue, with multiple tracks running right down the thoroughfare. Corning has a different Erie Street now, plus a Delaware Avenue and a Lackawanna Street. (In 1942, there was also a Lackawanna Avenue.) Then there’s Roundhouse Lane, running to where the old Fall Brook-New York Central roundhouse stood. Trolley Lane, which skirts Denison Park on two sides, memorializes the days when the trolley connected Corning, Elmira, Watkins Glen, and Painted Post.
Hornell of course was a major center for the Erie Railroad, and site of the line’s main repair shops, so it’s unsurprising that the Hornell map still shows Erie Court and Erie Avenue. There’s also a Depot Street, a Delaware Avenue, and a Shawmut Drive, for the Pittsburg and Shawmut, which ran up the western edge of the County. Division Street perhaps notes the fact that Hornell was the meeting place of two divisions on the Erie Railroad. Transit Drive may recall the trolley line that joined Hornell with Canisteo.
Of course these types of names spread out much farther afield than Steuben County. Those approaching Rochester from the south encounter Lehigh Station Road, while the Fairport area has Railroad Mills Road. Auburn has Train Drive, Cortland’s got Delaware Avenue, Elmira has its Erie Street, its Junction Street, its Railroad Avenue, and its Pennsylvania Avenue (which might refer to the railroad or the state). Geneva offers Railroad Place and Honeoye Falls enjoys Lehigh Street, while Ithaca has Delaware Avenue. Part of Horseheads is named Holding Point.
Many communities have a Canal Street (Geneva, Elmira) that goes way, way back. Some (Hornellsville) have an Airport Road that’s relatively recent. But LOTS of towns have names remembering railroads and their glory days. Which tells us which form of transportation most deeply touched people’s individual lives.
Tag Archives: railroads
“Railroads Remembered”
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I’ll take a leaf from Andy Rooney’s book, and tell you what bugs me.
*It bugs me that when I want to take the train to Rhode Island, I have to start out by driving from Bath to Rochester – 75 miles in the wrong direction. Which, even once I finally board, makes a trip longer, costlier, and much more tiresome than it need be.
*If I could start out by going to Binghamton… let alone Elmira, Corning, or even (wonder of wonders!) Bath, the trip would be a LOT nicer.
*The glory days of rail are not coming back anytime soon, but railways were vital to development of the Southern Tier. The Conhocton-Chemung-Susquehanna chain used to be a key transportation route, and the Southern Tier was the growth region.
*The Erie Canal, opened in 1825, crashed that growth. DeWitt Clinton, rounding up support for his “big ditch,” promised a future major transportation project for the Southern Tier. Over time that morphed into the Erie Railroad, which opened in 1851. The economy started growing again.
*At Steuben County Historical Society we have a set of diaries in which an Avoca person describes going to Painted Post to get the train… then to Bath… and finally being able to board right in Avoca itself.
*Going from Dansville to Bath on foot would be a hard two-day struggle… about the time it takes now to drive to Omaha. Once the railroad came in, Bath and Dansville were practically next-door neighbors.
*Soon after the Erie opened, the Steuben County sheriff was ordered to take two vagrants to New London, Connecticut, and sign them on board a whaling vessel – a project practical only thanks to the railroad.
*Steuben County has two cities and 14 incorporated villages. Apart from the Village of Hammondsport, every one lies along what was once the route of the Erie Railroad… and even Hammondsport was at the end of a short line eventually taken over by the Erie.
*The grape-and-wine businesses on Seneca and Keuka Lakes probably would have existed without railroads (in Penn Yan, Hammondsport, Watkins, Geneva) to haul out product, but on a much smaller scale.
*Those same lines turned Keuka and Seneca into tourist destinations, as families of the growing middle class rode out from the big cities for summer fun.
*Glenn Curtiss couldn’t have developed his airplane and motorcycle businesses… or at least, he couldn’t have done it in Hammondpsort… without the rail connections.
*Brooklyn Flint Glass Works moved to Corning (150 years ago this summer) to take advantage of its rail connections (though they moved their equipment by canal).
*Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, and Charles Evans Hughes all campaigned in Steuben County, delivered to the spot by rail.
*Aggressive use of rail was key to Union victory in the Civil War. Local men went by rail to Elmira or Rochester, where they were mustered into regiments and given what passed for basic training, then shipped out by rail.
*World War I draft contingents left home by rail. On November 11, 1918, a group that had just left Bath was stopped at Addison. After a few tense hours they got the good word: Go home – the war is over.
*Monthly draft contingents for World War II were sworn in at Steuben County courthouse in Bath, then marched (no doubt very badly) to the DL&W station, whence they were taken off to begin their military life. Joe Paddock was sent to Buffalo, and from there forwarded on via a train that took him – right back through Bath. He gathered some of his new friends on the platform of the observation car, and gave them a “tour” of his home town as the train chugged slowly through.
*Rails have been vital to the life of the Southern Tier. Ian Mackenzie, author of “Railroads Remembered: The History of Railroads in Western New York and Western Pennsylvania,” will give a presentation on the topic at 4 PM Friday, Feb. 2, in Bath Fire Hall, and books will be available for purchase. This is part of the Steuben County Historical Society Winter Lecture Series, and is free and open to the public. We hope we’ll see you!
Riding the Rails to Prosperity
On an April day in 1852, an Erie Railroad locomotive chug-chugged its way from Corning up through Coopers, then Campbell, then Savona, and on to Bath. After which it reversed course and returned to Corning, making, I imagine, the fastest round trip that had ever been done between those points since the first human hunters found their way here. It could, I suppose, have been accomplished using relays of horses, but I never heard of anyone trying it. Besides, the roads were terrible.
In the previous year the Erie had opened a direct line between Lake Erie and New York City, passing through Hornellsville, Addison, and Corning on the way. Now a major branch line was making its way from Corning and Bath through Kanona, Cohocton, Wayland, and Dansville on up to Rochester. Where once it would have taken the weary traveler days just to get to Rochester, now he or she could ride up, do business (or make visits) and return, all on the same day.
Along with that, of course, freight and mail could be carried quickly and cheaply either into or out of our area.
When Charles Williamson came out to develop this region in 1793, he had 1.2 million acres to choose from – all the way from the state line to Lake Ontario, and from Pre-Emption Road to the Genesee River. Yet he set his seat and his land office inconveniently on the edge, where he cut a clearing from the forest and named it Bath.
This he figured would become the great metropolis of western New York, thriving because the Conhocton, Chemung, and Susquehanna Rivers would be the great artery of commerce, trade, and travel.
He was right, too – until some busybody went and put in the Erie Canal. Once that opened in 1825, little no-account shanty towns like Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester started to boom, and our region was economically bypassed.
But in the legislative horse-trading to create his canal, DeWitt Clinton had promised a follow-up transportation project for the Southern Tier. Probably they were all thinking in terms of another canal, or maybe an improved highway. But they soon seized on a brand-new technology, and the Erie Railroad was born. And that, as Robert Frost would say, has made all the difference.
The railroad sited its main repair shops in the unincorporated hamlet of Hornellsville, provoking growth that created the City of Hornell. Addition of a parallel electric trolley line stimulated growth in the “suburb” Village of Canisteo.
A one-track short line running up to Prattsburgh (the K&P) didn’t seem like any great shakes, but it created a junction significant enough to keep five hotels in business in the hamlet of Kanona.
Another short line, running up from Pennsylvania, clinched the deal when Brooklyn executives were looking for a new home for their business. The Erie main line could ship product out to east and west. The short line could bring up charcoal, wood, and sand. The junction at Corning, they decided, would make a fine location for a Glass Works.
Railroad stops at Watkins and Penn Yan brought families from the big cities for extended summer visits. With a little help from steamboats taking visitors out to their lakeside resorts, Keuka and Seneca became travel destinations, and our tourism business was born.
With thousands of undergrads making the trip for decades, Cornell University and the Lehigh Valley Railroad grew up together.
Without the eight-mile one-track Bath and Hammondsport Railroad, the grape and wine business around Hammondsport might have become a curio, rather than a major enterprise. And Glenn Curtiss could never have developed the industries he did without that railroad. Minimally he’d have had to move to Bath. If he hadn’t, he’d have spent his days in the bike shop, and maybe one day opened an auto dealership.
We don’t notice the train so much any more, unless we have to wait at a crossing, but an incredible amount of our economy still runs on rails. On Friday April 3 at 4 PM we’re having Mike Connor give a Steuben County Historical Society presentation on our area railroads. Mike has spent his career as a railroad executive, and he’s also president of the Erie-Lackawanna Historical Society. His talk is free and open to the public, at the Bath Fire Hall. We hope you’ll join us.