Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 12).djvu/103

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THE GENESEE ROAD
99

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.

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.[1] 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.

The Great Genesee Road, as it was early

  1. The Iroquois Trail likewise left the river valley at this spot.