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New York's Capital District was ideally situated to become one of the nation's earliest and most important transportation crossroads. The Mohawk River was the only water level gap in the Appalachian range to the west, which led to the construction of the Erie Canal. Soon after its completion, the state's first railroad began operating between Albany and Schenectady in 1831. Other pioneer railroads followed, heading north to Canada, south to New York City, west to Chicago, and east to Boston. Over the next century, railroads like the New York Central, Boston & Albany, Boston & Maine, and Delaware & Hudson built extensive passenger stations, freight and classification yards, and repair shops in the tri-city region. Passenger operations continue today at the Schenectady and Albany-Rensselaer Amtrak stations, while the Selkirk Yard is still an important classification point for CSX Transportation.
New York's railroads were born of the cutthroat conflict of rate wars, bloody strikes and even federal graft. The railroad wars began as soon as the first line was chartered between Albany and Schenectady when supporters of the Erie Canal tried to block the new technology that would render their waterway obsolete. After the first primitive railroads overcame that hurdle, they began battling with one another in a series of rate wars to gain market share. Attracted by the success of the rails, the most powerful and cunning capitalists in the country--Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, Daniel Drew and other robber barons--joined the fray. Timothy Starr's account of New York's railroad wars steams through the nineteenth century with stories of rate pools, labor strikes, stock corners, legislative bribery and treasury plundering the likes of which the world had never seen.
When it came to first-class transportation, not many regions of North America had more to offer than the trolley lines of New Yorks Capital District. From their humble beginnings as horse roads forming belts around Albany, Schenectady, and Troy, these trolley lines helped move people around Upstate New York from the late 1800s until their final exit after World War II. The lines of the United Traction Company, Schenectady Railway, and the Hudson Valley Railway provided hundreds of miles of track around their home cities, as well as direct routes to resorts in the Adirondacks, Lake George, and Saratoga Springs. The trolley lines became famous for disasters that made national headlines, labor disputes, and engineering wonders that included the longest trolley bridge in the world. The vintage images in Trolleys of the Capital District provide insight into an era gone by and an often forgotten form of transportation.
The Encyclopedia of New York State is one of the most complete works on the Empire State to be published in a half-century. In nearly 2,000 pages and 4,000 signed entries, this single volume captures the impressive complexity of New York State as a historic crossroads of people and ideas, as a cradle of abolitionism and feminism, and as an apex of modern urban, suburban, and rural life. The Encyclopedia is packed with fascinating details from fields ranging from sociology and geography to history. Did you know that Manhattan's Lower East Side was once the most populated neighborhood in the world, but Hamilton County in the Adirondacks is the least densely populated county east of the Mississippi; New York is the only state to border both the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean; the Erie Canal opened New York City to rich farmland upstate . . . and to the west. Entries by experts chronicle New York's varied areas, politics, and persuasions with a cornucopia of subjects from environmentalism to higher education to railroads, weaving the state's diverse regions and peoples into one idea of New York State. Lavishly illustrated with 500 photographs and figures, 120 maps, and 140 tables, the Encyclopedia is key to understanding the state's past, present, and future. It is a crucial reference for students, teachers, historians, and business people, for New Yorkers of all persuasions, and for anyone interested in finding out more about New York State.