Man, What a Corridor

The Mohawk River

42 53.73 N 074 30.20 W

As I pass by this place, I can't help thinking about the amazing flow of commerce along this famous and historical corridor past, present, and future.

We are cruising west up the Mohawk River in the Mohawk Valley. On our right is a RR track, another RR Track, a tractor trail, a local road, a highway, and then a cliff. On our left is the Thruway (I90), a local road, a highway, a RR track, and steep hills. There are also remains of 6 old RR tracks, the original Erie Canal, the upgraded Erie Canal, countless roads, plank roads, toll roads, and Mohawk Indian trails. Not visible are the buried pipelines and cables.

Most of the cities and towns along the way had their origens in the commerce of providing services to travelers along the corridor. There were also numerous factories located here to gain access to easy transportation. Indeed, my first engineering job was a General Electric's Schenectay Works. At that time their major business was making giant generators, motors and turbines. Today, those same cities are a depressed part of the "rust belt" created when heavy industries making things of iron and steel declined in the USA.

Growing up in Manlius, NY I remember the local story. Manlius was a terminus or a stop for the Cherry Valley Turnpike. The turnpike was a toll road that reached Manlius in 1803. Immigrants used the turpike to travel west to settle. Probably they arrived in Albany by boat. Beyond the turnpike, there was only wilderness where travel was much tougher.

In the 19th century, farmers in New England and New York, abandoned their farms and migrated to the midwest. Of course, they used the roads in this valley to get there. Later, they could use the more convenient canal, and still later the still more convenient and fast railroads. As with all mass migrations, a fraction of the settlers found nice places along the way and settled there without completing their journeys.

Even today, warehouses and distribution centers are one of the fastest growing parts of the local economies.

Libby remarked that the economy couldn't be so depressed after all. The daily volume of freight on the railroads and on the Thruway is amazing. Indeed, I would guess that these railroad and highway lines are used to nearly full capacity.

This valley was also of great strategic value during the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812.

Worldwide there are many other corridors that follow river valleys and/or mountain passes for obvious reasons. At least for us, none of them are quite so historic and memorable as the Mohawk Valley.

By the way, I first wrote this nice long blog on my Droid using the Blogger app. I'm getting a bit better on using the Droid's keyboard. The app crashed halfway through causing me to lose all my work. Sigh.