New York State History

Westward-bound pioneers more than two centuries ago found that their easiest route led up the Hudson River as far as Fort Orange, now Albany, thence westward along the broad fertile Mohawk Valley.

One of the earliest of these pioneers, Hermen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, had no dreams of empire building when he set out one bleak December day in 1634 from Fort Orange, then a Dutch trading post. He and his two companions turned westward up Te-non-an-at-che, "the river that flows through mountains," the Mohawk. The Dutchman's thoughts were on the cold, on the flooded conditions along the river, on his doubtful reception by Indian neighbors, and on the unexplainable slump in the trade in beaver and otter skins.

Had he known it, Mynheer van den Bogaert had accomplished far more than opening the way to further trading ventures. He had discovered a great natural passage to the west, the only place along the Atlantic seaboard where there is such a corridor from salt water to the central basin of the continent. No other route affords such easy access to the interior.

Succeeding generations of traders and set­tlers made epic use of the passage, for the Mohawk River led them directly west more than 150 miles before it turned away to the north. Here the west­ward-bound, land-hungry pioneers, who followed the trail blazed by the Dutch traders, had a choice of routes. They could make a two-mile portage to a creek flowing into Oneida Lake, continue their journey by water down the Oswego River to Lake Ontario, then skirt its shore by boat to the narrow neck of land at Niagara that separated Lakes Ontario and Erie. Or they could push on from Fort Stanwix over the rolling uplands to Lake Erie by a route more direct but for a long time made hazardous by the uncertain hos­pitality of Indian tribes. Much later, when the frontier had moved far­ther west, the Erie Canal was dug along this route to connect Buffalo and Albany by water and "overnight opened up the east to the west and the west to the east."

This is New York's Great Corridor, where industrial cities are now strung, like beads, along the line of the waterways. For trade has always followed available water, and in the wake of trade have come towns, cities, and industries. So it has been along the Corridor formed by the Hudson River, the Mohawk River, and the Erie Canal. A strip 30 miles wide from Buffalo east to Albany and then south to New York City, with tributaries fanning out to the north and south to encompass the rich North Country and the productive southern valleys, is today the home of more than 80 per cent of the State's population and the bulk of its industry. Railways now follow the water routes, and power lines parallel both, in the paths beaten out by pioneers.