In the railroad-crazed days of the 1830’s every city, town and village wanted to have a railroad run through it and Western New York was no exception. The decision where to locate the western terminus of the Erie Railroad and what route should be taken to reach it was subject to a great deal of debate and lobbying by the various towns and villages.
The charter for the New York and Erie Railroad was approved by the New York State legislature on April 24, 1832 and specified that the western end of the line must be on the shore of Lake Erie in Chautauqua county. This was done to satisfy the legislators from the Southern Tier and to placate the operators of the Erie Canal by ensuring that the railroad was built as far from “Clinton’s Ditch” as possible.
The first survey of the potential route was done by Benjamin Wright from May to December 1834. Wright’s selected a route through Salamanca to the village of Levant, 3 miles east of Jamestown. From there the line turned north following the Cassadaga valley to Dunkirk. This route generally follows Route 60 and was eventually chosen by the Dunkirk, Allegany Valley and Pittsburgh Railroad when it was built in 1870. For more information, see the Benjamin Wright’s 1834 map.
In 1836, Captain Andrew Talbot was hired to resurvey the route and examine other options. Following his survey, the company decided to use a route that followed the Southern Tier to Randolph, 16 miles east of Jamestown, where it turned north and followed the Conewango valley to Dunkirk. This same general route was later used by the Buffalo and Jamestown Railroad, later Buffalo and Southwestern Railroad.
On August 15, 1838, the Erie hired nine contractors to begin clearing and grading a ten-mile, double-tracked section of the line eastward from Dunkirk. On November 1, 1840, the company hired John Tracy and Company of Erie, Pa to grade four miles of single-track roadbed from the end of the first contract to Arkwright Summit. On May 8, 1841, another firm was hired to clear another section of the line to the swamp south of Balcom. In 1841 the company delivered half of a 400 ton order of cast iron rails to Dunkirk where they were laid on the first ten miles of the grade. In 1842, the eastern portion of the line was stalled between Goshen and Middleton for lack of rail. The people of Middleton arranged to have the rails removed from the Dunkirk section of the line and shipped back to Middleton where they were installed.
In 1849 the company appointed Silas Seymour re-re-survey the western end of the line. After a year of study he recommended that the line be built north from Salamanca through Little Valley, Cattaraugus and Dayton to Dunkirk. This route provoked an outcry from communities being bypassed and the company appointed McRae Swift to re-examine the route yet again. He endorsed Seymour’s route and the company wrote off the half-million dollars of work already done in Dunkirk and chose Seymour’s route. The line was completed on that route and on May 15, 1851 the first train from New York arrived in Dunkirk carrying a host of luminaries, including the President of the United States, Millard Fillmore, and members of his cabinet.