Waiting for the Erie Line: Property, improvement, and market revolution in the Southern Tier of New York State, 1790--1850

The Southern Tier of New York State, defined as the ten counties from Orange to Chautauqua along the New Jersey and Pennsylvania borders, was (and is) geographically distinct from the Erie Canal counties. The Allegheny Plateau and Catskill Mountains discouraged settlement and commercial agriculture throughout a significant portion of this region. In addition, certain land tenure practices in the eastern and western portions of the Southern Tier, that either perpetuated tenancy or discouraged quick liquidation of land, combined with the rocky and nutrient-poor soil to create conditions of debt that precluded the kind of large scale capital development needed to fund the construction of internal transportation improvements necessary for commercial development. Thus, this particular combination of mountainous terrain, foreign and absentee land-ownership, inadequate capital development, and mediocre transportation systems impacted the ways in which the Southern Tier experienced the phenomenon known as the market revolution.; Viable transportation routes are the arteries of the market economy. In 1825 the state funded Erie Canal was completed between Albany and Buffalo. This canal transformed several towns along its line into thriving commercial cities. The New York and Erie Railroad was intended to be the Southern Tier's version of the Erie Canal—a viable transportation route through the Southern Tier expressly for community development and the facilitation of commerce. This improvement, however, did not enjoy the same support in the state legislature as the Erie Canal. Indeed, it was the very support of canal expenditures for the Erie and its laterals that prevented the timely funding of the railroad. Official party ideology, intra-party division, regional interest, and economic instability delayed the completion of the New York and Erie Railroad until 1851, nearly twenty years after the granting of the original charter. The eventual completion of the railroad, however, did not seem to have the immediate effect upon the Southern Tier of creating “boom towns.” While fundamental to the coal trade, the New York and Erie Railroad was far less a facilitator of local and regional commerce than the Erie Canal.