The Seaway Trail Firsts

Seaway Trail Foundation, Inc., 1-800-SEAWAY-T
If you find any of these tidbits of interest, please make note of the item/site connection to the Seaway Trail, one of America’s Byways noted for “great American road trips.”

•  The first New York State Park devoted to showcasing the arts is Artpark in the
Seaway Trail/Niagara County community of Lewiston.
716-754-9000, www.artpark.net

• The prototype of academic halls and the place where the concept of summer school originated is Chautauqua Institution. Noted for its Victorian architecture, Chautauqua Institution was founded by Methodist minister John H. Vincent from Pennsylvania and manufacturer-philanthropist Lewis Miller from Ohio in 1874 in the Seaway Trail/Chautauqua County community of Chautauqua. Classes, conferences and lectures draw people to the now-internationally-known center for the arts, education, philosophy, politics ,and outdoor recreation.
716-357-6269, www.ciweb.org

• The United States’ first monument to honor an African-American is found over the grave of Frederick Douglass in Mt. Hope Cemetery in the Seaway Trail/Monroe County city of Rochester. Douglass founded the abolitionist newspaper, “The North Star,” in Rochester.
1-800-677-7282, www.visitrochester.com

• Donald Duck was first drawn by his creator Henry L. Porter, who was born in the Seaway Trail/Orleans County community of Albion in 1901. He joined Disney Studios as an artist in 1936 and was a contributing animator of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

• The effort to return bald eagles to the wetlands of New York State first began in 1976. Nesting eagles are now seen in Seaway Trail locations that are among the Audubon-designated Important Bird Areas (IBAs) in New York State (20% of the state’s IBAs are in the Seaway Trail region). Visit Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge, and keep a sharp eye out when traveling along the St. Lawrence River section of the Seaway Trail. FYI: Thousands of hawks are seen each spring and fall at Derby Hill Bird Observatory in the Seaway Trail’s Oswego County.
315-349-8322. www.oswegcounty.com/tourism

• George Eastman first began experimenting with the photographic process in his mother’s Rochester kitchen. He produced his first camera in 1888. His home is now the Eastman House and International Museum of Photography and Film,
585-271-3361, www.eastman.org

• The French first occupied Fort Niagara in the Seaway Trail/Niagara County community of Youngstown in 1725 after building the magnificient stone structures still seen today. The architectural centerpiece of this historic tourist attraction is the “French Castle.” British and American troops would occupy the fort at later times.
716-745-7611, www.oldfortniagara.org. (See also Fort Niagara Lighthouse left and below.)

• Fort Niagara Lighthouse (seen left), built in 1872, is said to be the earliest lighthouse on all the Great Lakes. The light is one of 28 lights found along the Seaway Trail in New York and Pennsylvania. Buffalo Main Light and Presque Isle Lighthouse (PA), both built in 1818, claim to be the first official AmerIcan lighthouses on the Great Lakes.
716-745-7611, www.oldfortniagara.org. (See also Fort Niagara.)

• The “Gaslight Era” began in the Seaway Trail/Chautauqua County communities of Fredonia and Barcelona. Fredonia residents drilled the nation’s first natural gas well in 1821. Ten years later a “burning spring” was discovered near Barcelona Lighthouse. Wooden pipes carried the gas to the light to make it the first public building in the U.S. to be lit with natural gas. (For Fredonia links, see also National Grange and Women’s Christian Temperance Union.)
1-800-242-4569, www.tourchautauqua.com

• The first society of the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, founded in 1867 in Washington, DC, was established in the Seaway Trail/Chautauqua County community of Fredonia. (See also Women’s Christian Temperance Union.)

• The Belva Lockwood Memorial in the Seaway Trail/Niagara County community of Middleport honors the first woman to practice law before the Supreme Court. Ms. Lockwood drafted the law passed by Congress in 1879 that allowed her to set this legal precedent. Lockwood secured enactment of the bill requiring that female federal employees receive the same wages as their male counterparts, and authored a bill granting sufferage to women in Oklahoma, Arizona and New York in 1903.

• The Maid of the Mist took her first tourist trip to the base of Niagara Falls in 1846.
716-284-8897, www.maidofthemist.com

• The first steam-driven merry-go-round was made by noted carousel maker Allen Herschell in 1883. His factory in the Seaway Trail/Niagara County community of North Tonawanda is a museum with a restored 1916 carrousel.
716-693-1885, www.carouselmuseum.org.

• The Mormon faith began with fourteen-year-old Joseph Smith who began his journey as a Mormon prophet near the Seaway Trail/Wayne County community of Palmyra in 1827. The annual Hill Cumorah Pageant, with a cast of more than 600, has celebrated Joesph’s finding of buried records on a hill where a great battle was fought in ancient America since 1935. The first editions of the Book of Mormon were printed in the Grandin Building, now part of the Hill Cumorah complex with the Joseph Smith Home, a farm, a chapel and a visitors center in Palmyra.
315-597-1671, www.hillcumorah.com.

• The first city to have parks connected by parkways was the Seaway Trail/Erie County city of Buffalo. Renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted designed Buffalo’s park system.
1-800-BUFFALO, www.buffalocvb.org

• The first propeller driven steamship in the world, the Vandalia was constructed in Oswego in 1840. This technological development is said to have revolutionized the commercial shipping industry.

• The first Pullman Sleeping Car was produced in 1859. George Pullman, born in the Seaway Trail’s Chautauqua County in 1831, is credited with creating first-class train travel with his sleeper car.

•  America’s first-ever replica of the famous Sesame Street arrived in Rochester at The Strong Museum in 1998 and has stayed among the kid-friendly, interactive exhibits here.
585-263-2700, www.strongmuseum.org

•  The Saint Lawrence Seaway first opened to ships in 1959. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth II were attended ceremonies in Montreal and in the Seaway Trail/St. Lawrence County community of Massena. Talk of widening the Seaway begins public debate in 2002. 315-764-3211

• The first St. Lawrence skiff was built in 1868 in Clayton by Xavier Colon. The world’s finest collection of classic and antique boats, including skiffs, is found at The Antique Boat Museum in the Seaway Trail/Jefferson County/St. Lawrence riverside community of Clayton.
315-686-4104, www.abm.org

• The first commercially successful system of sound film was developed in 1923 at Case Research Lab in the Seaway Trail/Cayuga County/St. Lawrence community of Auburn.

• The Women’s Christian Temperance Union was founded by Esther McNeil in the Fredonia Baptist Church in 1874. (See also National Grange.)