Boom Times: The Steel Belt

By the beginning of the 20^th century, the Niagara Frontier had reached a point where its natural advantages, augmented by human efforts such as the canals, left it poised to become an even more important center of financial and transportation activity.  The age of the canals had been short ­ as early as the 1850s, for example, the Erie Canal had ceased to turn a profit and railroads had begun encroaching on the shipping business.  But despite the worries of those narrowly fixated on canal traffic, the area easily adapted to the evolving economy.  Still boasting the largest inland port in North America, and still conveniently located at the terminus of Great Lakes shipping routes, the Niagara Frontier was as attractive to railroad builders as it had been to canal diggers.  A network of railroads linked Buffalo to New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and other points east that had formerly been served by the canal.  By 1869 the city’s railroad freight tonnage exceeded canal traffic for the first time, and by the turn of the century, Buffalo was second only to Chicago in the number of railroads terminating in the city.  Railroad routes sprouted on the Canadian side, too:   the Great Western linked Fort Erie to Detroit in 1854, the national “Grand Trunk Railroad” linked up to the peninsula’s lines in 1882, and in 1893 tracks joined Toronto, Hamilton, and Buffalo.

Along with the railroads came a new industry:  ironworks.  Iron had long accompanied grains and other raw materials through the Welland and the transportation hub at Buffalo, but in the 1850s railroads connected the Niagara Frontier to coal producing regions.  This made it significantly cheaper to process iron.  Two decades later, the iron deposits in Lake Superior began to be seriously exploited by entrepreneurs like the Goodyear brothers, and the influx of raw ore quickly transformed the Niagara Frontier into an industrial center ready to challenge Pittsburgh as the iron capital of North America.  Soon the landscape was dotted with great ironworks, many of them in Buffalo:  Jewett and Roots; Hart, Ball, and Hart; Buffalo Architectural Iron Works; Buffalo Iron and Nailworks; and others. 

In 1900 Buffalo granted Lackawanna Iron and Steel Company a virtual fiefdom north of the city, and the industrial giant soon became the region’s economic lodestone, employing over 6,000 people.  In 1922 Bethlehem Steel bought Lackawanna, and in 1938 retooled it for the growing automobile market.  This drew in automobile industry giants like General Motors, Dunlop, and Studebaker.  Meanwhile, smaller metalworks factories sprouted up in Canadian cities like Welland (the Welland Iron Works in 1860, for example, and Welland Iron and Brass Company in 1918) and St. Catharines (particularly the McKinnon Dash and Metal works plant in 1901, bought by GM in 1928, and the Packard Electric Company, which began producing Oldsmobiles in 1905).

By the end of the 19^th century, the cheap and plentiful hydroelectric power provided by the Falls made the region an irresistible location for processing all kinds of raw materials, not just iron.  Industrial growth acquired its own momentum, and new industries began to congregate:  Buffalo, for example, welcomed Ketchum Mowing Machines and Reapers; Forbush and Brown’s Shoe and Boot Manufacturing; Gerhard Lang Company brewery; Kitinger Furniture; the Larkin Soap Company (situated in the only office building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright); National Aniline Chemicals; Pierce automobile manufacturers; Conrad Steam Motor Carriage Company; and the list could go on.

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