CHAPTER IV

THE GENESEE ROAD

The military importance of the Mohawk Valley and strategic portage at Rome, New York, was emphasized in our study of Portage Paths.[31] Throughout the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary struggle the water route to the Hudson from Lake Ontario, by way of the Onondaga, Lake Oneida, Wood Creek, and the Mohawk, was of great moment. But only because it was a route—a thoroughfare; not because the territory through which it coursed was largely occupied or of tremendous value. The French held the lakes and the English were constantly striving for foothold there. When Fort Oswego was built on the present site of Oswego, the first step by the English was taken; the route had been the river route with a portage at Fort Williams (Rome). When Fort Niagara was captured in 1759 by Sir William Johnson, the French were driven from the Lakes; Johnson’s route to Niagara was by Lake Ontario from Oswego. It has been suggested that a volume of this series of monographs should be given to the campaigns of the English against Fort Niagara. These campaigns were made largely on waterways; they left no roads which became of any real importance in our national development. Certain campaigns of the Old French War left highways which have become of utmost significance; only of these routes and their story should this series be expected to treat. Despite the two wars which had created busy scenes in the Mohawk Valley, no landward route connected it with Niagara River and Lake Erie except the Iroquois Trail.[32] No military road was built through the “Long House of the Iroquois.” To gain the key of the western situation—Niagara—the common route was to Oswego. There were local roads along the lake shore, and these were used more or less by the troops. In the Revolution no American general could get beyond Fort Stanwix by land. Leger himself came up the Oswego River to join Burgoyne.

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(Parts AA´ and BB´ belong opposite)
[Drawn about 1756; from original in British Museum]

As a consequence, the interior of New York was an almost unexplored wilderness at the end of the Revolution in 1783. With the opening of the Genesee country by the various companies which operated there, a tide of immigration began to surge westward from the upper Mohawk along the general alignment of the old-time Iroquois Trail. Utica sprang up on the site of old Fort Schuyler, and marked the point of divergence of the new land route of civilization from the water route.[33] This was about 1786. In 1789 Asa Danworth erected his salt works at Bogardus Corners, now the city of Syracuse. Geneva, Batavia, and Buffalo mark the general line of the great overland route from Utica and Syracuse across New York. It followed very closely the forty-third meridian, dropping somewhat to reach Buffalo.