Post-Industrial America in Western New York
I grew up in industrial American—Factories, mines, drained wetlands, transportation on rivers by barge and on land by railroad. When I drive through the area where I grew up, the factories sit abandoned and the areas that were mined have become strip-mine lakes, stocked with fish. Along the Illinois River, vast areas of floodplain, once drained, are being restored to their original state and marketed as the rich hunting and fishing grounds they once were. As I look at the slow, but steady disappearance of the industrial landscape, I’ve often wondered how long it took the Roman roads to disappear in Great Britain. How many years passed before people no longer knew what had been there before?
This thought has been on my mind as I have explored the Niagara and Buffalo region. The areas industrial past is everywhere to be seen—abandoned factories, extensive railroads with little traffic, and grain elevators with peeling paint. Their existence speaks to the importance of the region as a transportation hub south of Niagara Falls. Here the Erie Canal and railroads met at the point on the Great Lakes just past Niagara Falls, providing a transportation hub for products going to and from the interior of the continent via Great Lakes shipping. Wheat from the Midwest came to Buffalo and filled the elevators. Iron ore from the Minnesota Iron Range met the coal from Ohio and Pennsylvania to support the iron and steel industry. And the tremendous water power from Niagara Falls was tapped to fuel the industrial growth.
The Buffalo and Niagara area are being slowly transformed. In the midst of abandoned industrial sites, recreational uses are arising. Among the peeling elevators along the lake shore you can now find marinas with sailboats. Along the Niagara River, four lane roads have been turned into two lane roads with bike paths.
On what appeared to be the last good hiking day of the year I headed to Devil’s Hole State Park where I hiked down the Niagara gorge just below a massive dam. The gorge is north of Niagara Falls, carved out by the power of the water that flows over the falls. As I walked down the steps and then walked along the river, it was hard to believe that the remnants of industrial America were just above me.
