Tally Ho Coach in front of Bagg's Hotel, Utica

Traveling on roads in Oneida County 200 years ago was an adventure to be undertaken by only the strongest and sturdiest of pioneer, wagon and beast. The few roads that did exist in the 1780s were narrow trails filled with deep holes and ruts and made impassable by the slightest rainfall. As a result, by the time Oneida County was formed March 15, 1798, more than 90 percent of its inhabitants used rivers and other waterways, not roads, to move people and goods.

New England families journeying to settle in Oneida County usually chose the Mohawk River and traveled in small boats ... heavier cargoes went by flat-bottomed boats designed for shallow waters ... until they reached Old Fort Schuyler (Utica) or “The Great Carry” near Fort Stanwix (Rome). Those who wanted to head west beyond Ft. Stanwix carried their boats from the river for a mile to Wood Creek and proceeded to Oneida Lake and from there to Lake Ontario and the other Great Lakes.

In 1800 New York State chartered the Seneca Turnpike Co. to build an improved road from Utica's Bagg's Square south to New Hartford and then west to Vernon and Oneida Castle ... along the course of today's Route 5. The turnpike made Utica the fastest-growing community in the region as it began to attract not only westbound travelers, but also permanent settlers who ran stagecoach companies and entrepreneurs eager to build hotels, taverns, blacksmith shops and wagon repair shops. The business of accommodating travelers became Utica's first major industry.

Erie Canal from Hotel Street, Utica

The county got its second turnpike in the early 1800s when the Great Western Turnpike was built through the towns of Sangerfield and Bridgewater along a path that Route 20 follows today. Turnpikes made traveling a bit more comfortable, but transporting heavy freight to and from the county was expensive and made the prices of goods produced in the region prohibitive in Eastern markets. That problem was solved by the Erie Canal.

When talk of building a canal from the Hudson River to Lake Erie via the Mohawk Valley began in earnest, in about 1810, many powerful politicians opposed the project. Thomas Jefferson said, “Making a canal 350 miles through wilderness ... it is a little short of madness. Perhaps in 100 years.” But in 1815, the state Legislature prodded by political leader DeWitt Clinton voted to survey the route an Erie Canal would follow. Two years later, the survey concluded that the 363-mile canal could be built for $6 million. It eventually cost $7 million.

Clinton ... by then governor of the state ... decided that work on the 94-mile middle section of the canal from Utica west to the Seneca River would be completed first since the terrain was flat and the earth soft. That meant the greatest progress could be made in the shortest time thus silencing opponents.

Black River Canal

A crowd gathered in the early morning of July 4, 1817 near Rome as ground was broken to signal the beginning of construction of the canal. Two years later, Oct. 22, 1819, the section between Utica and Rome was opened. Thousands cheered as the first boat to travel on the Erie ... the 60-foot “Chief Engineer of Rome” named for Benjamin Wright of Rome, who was the middle section's civil engineer ... left Rome for Utica towed by one horse.

When the canal was completed in 1825, it became an immediate success. Revenues poured in as 218,000 tons of freight were carried the first year. The cost of shipping cargo from Albany to Buffalo dropped from $100 to $7. The value of land along the canal increased greatly. And Utica and Rome became boom towns with Utica's population exploding in 1820-30 from 2,972 to 8,323 and Rome's from 3,569 to 4,360.

The county's population grew in that decade, too, from 50,997 to 71,326. Many of its new residents were Irish immigrants who helped to build the Erie. The success of the Erie prompted the building of two lateral canals in Oneida County: the Chenango in 1836 and the Black River, begun the same year. The Chenango ... from Binghamton to Utica ... came at an opportune time for Utica. It was converting its textile mills to steam power and needed coal from Pennsylvania to produce that steam. The Black River began in Rome and proceeded north to the Black River in Carthage.

Train Station, Bridgewater

The Erie was ideal for hauling freight, but hauling passengers was another matter. Packet boats were small and usually over­crowded. It's not surprising then that the Erie lost most of its passenger business in the early 1840s when the railroads came to town. The first railroad in the state was the Mohawk and Hudson between Albany and Schenectady. It opened in 1831. Five years later, the Utica and Schenectady began operations with six locomotives and 50 cars each with a 24-passenger capacity.

In 1839, the Utica and Syracuse was completed as were other short lines to the west. In 1853, Albany merchant Erastus Corning consolidated all the small rail­roads into the New York Central. Between 1850 and 1895, nearly a dozen smaller railroads originated in the county or passed through it ... including the West Shore. Farmers in Oneida County benefited greatly from the railroad, though, as they began to grow more and more crops for far­away markets.

Railroads weren't the only modes of transportation to use tracks. Since 1860, horse-drawn trolleys had been used throughout the county. In 1890, the Utica Belt Line began to use electric trolleys from the city to places like Clinton, Deerfield and Oriskany. Many thought: “Travel between communities can't get much better than trolleys.”

They were wrong, for at the turn of the century the automobile came to town. In April 1900, the Saturday Globe ran a photo of Dr. Willey L. Kingsley of Rome in his Locomobile runabout and identified him as the first Oneida County resident to own a horseless carriage. By 1901, so many others did that they formed the Automobile Club of Utica only one of nine such clubs in the United States. In 1902, representatives from Utica and the other eight clubs met in Chicago and formed the American Automobile Association.

The first half of the 20th century saw many changes in transportation in Oneida County. In 1914 New York Central opened its magnificent Union Station in Utica and made the city one of the largest freight centers in the country. The Erie Canal was closed and the larger Barge Canal was opened in 1918. In the second half of the century, the Oneida County Airport opened with Robinson Airlines inaugurating scheduled passenger service in 1950. And in 1954, the Thruway opened.