ERIE RAILROAD. Chartered 24 April 1832, by the New York State legislature to construct a railroad from Lake Erie to the Hudson River, the New York and Lake Erie Railway Company was organized with a capital of $3,000,000, the credit of the State being ex tended to a like amount. The charter provided that the road should make no connection with any railroad in New Jersey or Pennsylvania without special legislative consent and also pro vided that it should run through the southern tier counties of New York. This plan was in accordance with the idea advanced by W. C. Redfield in 1830 when he proposed a railroad from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River. His plan was that it should be a great national road to follow the so-called °Appian Way" advocated by Generals Clinton and Sullivan in 1780 to further the development of what then consti tuted the United States.
In 1841, the railroad was opened from Pier mount, at the extreme southern point of New York State on the Hudson River, inland to Goshen, Orange County, a distance of 46 miles.
Opposed as it was by the canal counties and their representatives in both the State and na tional legislatures, the Erie had to fight for its existence from its birth through a series of legislative obstructions and financial manipula tions that developed even in its early days. Be fore its completion to Dunkirk, which was the objective point on Lake Erie, and as a conse quence of these obstacles to progress, the road had to be placed in the hands of a receiver. In 1845, the State released its claim for the money advanced for construction and through the ener getic efforts of the Erie's friends, it was finally opened by President Fillmore, Daniel Webster, his Secretary of State, and other government and State officials, from Piermont to Dunkirk, on 22 April 1851, a distance of 463 miles. From Piermont, passengers were conveyed to New York by steamer. This operated so much to the disadvantage of the road that its charter was amended in 1852 permitting it to pass through New Jersey to its present termi nal in Jersey City, and Piermont was abandoned as a terminal in May 1861. Previous to that abandonment, the road was again — in 1859 in the hands of a receiver and was sold to the Erie Railway Company in 1861. This new com pany also bought the Buffalo and New York City Railroad and so secured independent en trance into Buffalo, which was made its prin cipal lake terminal in place of Dunkirk. It has
so remained up to this time.
In accordance with English ideas, the road was built with a six-foot gauge, a mistake in construction that for years acted. as a deterrent to its successful operation, owing to the fact that contents of cars had to be transferred at connecting points. Another mistake of its early managers was a refusal of the Erie to ac cept entrance into New York city over the New York and Harlem lines, then being constructed and which later passed to the control of the New York Central. But this management did see the value of the coal traffic and in 1861 it entered the anthracite coal fields of Pennsyl vania and later through its Bradford branch reached the bituminous fields. But in the mean time, it had become a financial foot-ball in Wall street, partly through a desire to combine with the Atlantic and Great Western, then building, through Ohio, for the purpose of making a route to Saint Louis on the Mississippi River. A connection to the Ohio River at Cincinnati was ultimately effected through a combination with the Atlantic and Great Western and an operating connection with the C., H. and D. completed 33 years after the first work on the Erie was begun.
In 1867, Jay Gould and Col. James Fisk came into possession of the Erie and from 1868 to 1872 a fight ensued between Gould, Vander bilt, Fisk, James McHenry and Daniel Drew for the possession of the property, resulting in its spectacular wreckage after one of the bit terest and most vindictive railway wars in his tory. The contest for the possession of the property and the financial manipulations in dulged in enriched all who were interested ex cepting the actual owners of the road and these it impoverished as it did the road itself. At the conclusion of this historic fight, Hugh J. Jewett came in as president in 1874 and a year later was made receiver, the property having been pur chased by the security holders to prevent its complete wrecicage. It was reorganized in 1878 as the New York, Lake Erie and Western. It then owned 525 miles of road and leased 400 more. The road was converted into a standard gauge road at a cost of $25,000,000 and was double tracked from Jersey City to Buffalo.