Abandoned Tracks

Bridges are expensive structures and therefore they are only built out of need or with the expectation of community benefit or monetary profit. But what happens when that calculus of benefit and profit changes, when the bridge no longer serves a desired purpose? In that case the bridge is likely going to be abandoned, especially if it was privately owned.

America has always been a country of speculative, sometimes profligate builders. Abandoned canals, for example, crisscross the landscape after the collapse of the canal building boom of the first half of the 19th century. Those that are maintained such as the Erie Canal generally are kept functioning because there are strong governmental interests committed to their survival, mostly because they provide some sort of scenic or atmospheric reward. Most of these canals were doomed because their function, the transportation of goods, was done better, faster, and more cheaply by a new technology: the railroad.

Railroads dominated the 19th century the way the internet does today, upending commerce, reshaping the landscape, opening broad swathes of the country to settlement with the consequent displacement of the Native Americans who lived there. They reordered the psyche too, bringing a faster pace to life. Henry David Thoreau in Walden, his critique of the ills of modern life, remarked ruefully on the way that the piercing blast of the train whistle traveled even to his small cabin by the shores of Walden Pond. He complained that people were not the master of this new form of transportation but its slaves: “We do not ride on the railroad; it rides on us.”

Thoreau’s critique is a timeless one for every new technology. How many of us bemoan the way our smart phones, social media accounts, and continual rounds of alerts, notifications, and updates seem to control our lives and enslave us to our devices? And yet how many of us are willing to pitch them all and go, like Thoreau, and live in the woods to see if we can live deliberately? Very few. Instead we want the latest thing and want it as cheaply and as fastly as possible. It’s always been true, which is why people spent the money to throw up railroad bridges across obstacles like the Genesee River.

These meditations were not on my mind when Ursula first noticed the abandoned railroad bridge as we drove down the road on the way to another bridge. Instead, I was delighted we had discovered something I wasn’t expecting. We didn’t visit it that day and only viewed it from a distance, but something about the site of this delapidated bridge (which we couldn’t actually approach because of a fence) stretching in the distance fired the imagination. There’s a romance to ruins.

Bridge looking east

What was this bridge? When I got home I discovered that it was the remains of the railroad bridge built in 1887 for the Rochester, Waterton, & Ogdensburg (R. W. & O. ) Railroad. Anyone who lives in Webster (my hometown) has probably hiked the Hojack Trail at some point. Hojack was another name for the R. W. & O. and so this bridge was part of the network used by the railroad to service much of upper New York State.

In Edward Hungerford’s 1922 history of the R. W. & O. he describes how the railroad’s president Charles Parsons acquired this part of the route: “For more than a decade the Lake Ontario Shore extension of the R. W. & O. had passed close to the city of Rochester through the then village of Charlotte (now a ward of an enlarged Rochester), and had touched that city only through indifferent connections from Charlotte. Parsons, at Britton’s suggestion, decided that the road must have a direct entrance into Rochester; which already was beginning its abounding and wonderful growth. The two men found their opportunity in a small and sickly suburban railroad which ran down the east bank of the Genesee from the northern limits of the city and over which there ran from time to time a small train, propelled by an extremely small locomotive. They easily acquired that road and gradually pushed it well into the heart of the city; to a passenger and freight terminal in State Street, not far from the famed Four Corners. To reach this terminal—upon the West Side of the town—it was necessary to build a very high and tenuous bridge over the deep gorge of the Genesee. This took nearly a year to construct. Injunction proceedings had been brought against the construction of the R. W. & O. into the heart of the city of Rochester. Yet, under the laws of that time, these were ineffective upon the Sabbath day. Parsons took advantage of this technical defect in the statutes, and on a Sabbath day he successfully brought his railroad into its largest city. In the meantime a fine, old-fashioned, brick residence in State Street had been acquired for a Rochester passenger terminal. To make this building serve as a passenger-station, and be in proper relation to the tracks, it was necessary to change its position upon the tract of land that it occupied. This was successfully done, and, I believe, was the record feat at that time for the moving of a large, brick building. The bridge was completed and the station opened for the regular use of passenger trains in the fall of 1887.”

The City of Rochester has a wonderful resource where you can compare present-day maps with older ones. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of Rochester in 1900 with the city today. You can see the line of the bridge extending over the Genesee River (though the formatting is slightly offset).

It was a railroad that never fulfilled its founders’ hopes, meaning that it tended to fall into disrepair. An article from September 4, 1908 from the Watertown Daily Times mentioned that the R. W. & O. Railroad was known to actually stand for “Rotten Wood & Old Rusty Rails!” Fitting for a railroad that built a now-abandoned bridge! In 1891, only four years after the bridge was built, the R. W. & O. became part of the New York Central Railroad. The bridge seems to have continued in use until about 1990.

1890 ‘map of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg Railroad

Early 20th century postcard from collections of Rochester Public Library Local History Division

While I didn’t get a chance to explore the bridge when we first discovered it, at the end of January I dropped our youngest son Jonny off to go sledding, and I then drove over to the bridge to see if I could get some pictures. Down a steep hill there is an RG&E building and from there you can get easy access to the land by the river around bridge. As is true elsewhere in this area, nature is reasserting itself. The deer were certainly plentiful.

The snow was fairly deep, but I was able to walk up to and all around the bridge and enjoyed the solitude of this derelict structure in the snow. I grabbed lots of pictures.

There has been a trend in recent years to repurpose old railroad bridges for use by pedestrians and bicyclists. On the east side of the river right near the bridge, part of the R. W. & O. line has been converted into the El Camino walking trail. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the trail continued across this bridge and afforded the public these delightful views of the Genesee River?