The Story of the Rome, Watertown, and Ogdensburg RailRoad

In the late summer of 1836 the locomotive first reached Utica and a new era in the development of Central and Northern New York was begun. For forty years before that time, however—in fact ever since the close of the War of the Revolution—there had been a steady and increasing trek of settlers into the heart of what was soon destined to become the richest as well as the most populous state of the Union. But its development was constantly retarded by the lack of proper transportation facilities. For while the valley of the Mohawk, the gradual portage just west of Rome and the way down to Oswego and Lake Ontario through Oneida Lake and its emptying waterways, formed the one natural passage in the whole United States of that day from the Atlantic seaboard to the Great Lakes and the little-known country beyond, it was by no means an easy pathway. Not even after the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company had builded its first crude masonry locks in the narrow natural impasse at Little Falls, so that the bateaux of the early settlers, which made the rest of the route in comparative ease, might pass through its one very difficult bottle-neck.