Over the years, Niagara Discoveries has explored several aspects of the history of the area at or near what is now Bond Lake (Clyde E. Burmaster Park), as well as that of the hamlet of Pekin. Although located more than a mile northwest of Pekin, the stretch of Lower Mountain Road between Townline and Dickersonville roads was considered part of that hamlet. Today, properties in Pekin have a Sanborn address while the park at Bond Lake has a Ransomville address even though it is in the town of Lewiston. For the purposes of today's article, the area being looked in on was considered within Pekin at the beginning of the 20th century.
What started out as an essay about what was known as the Cambria branch of New York Central Railroad (also known as the Pekin Railroad) has expanded into a look back at the quarry operations at what is now Bond Lake.
In order to tell that story, you have start with the Lackawanna Steel Corporation of Scranton, Pennsylvania. The company had been in operation, under many different forms, since its founding by the Scranton family in the mid-19th century. By the late 1890s, rising shipping costs, attempts at unionization and lack of room for expansion led the company to look for a new location. In 1899, the Scrantons looked at land on the shores of Lake Erie in West Seneca. Accompanied by John G. Milburn and John J. Albright, both of whom were affiliated with the Pan American Exposition Company, the Scranton delegation led many property owners to believe that land was being considered for the site of the Exposition and, as a result, sold their properties at a much lower price.
The Lackawanna Steel Company began building the new plant in West Seneca in 1900 (the City of Lackawanna wasn’t established until 1909) and the first steel was produced three years later. The steel making process requires large quantities of crushed limestone to act as a flux when smelting iron ore to promote fluidity and remove impurities in the form of slag. Steel companies did tests in areas where limestone might be present and profitable enough to quarry. In early 1908, the Lackawanna Steel Co. sent inspectors to examine the rock in the vicinity of Lower Mountain Road near Dickersonville. It was reported that “a vein of limestone between 60 and 100 feet wide and from four to ten feet thick extending along the ledge of the ridge…was found to be nearly two miles long.” Within a month, owners of properties where the vein was located were offered $75 to $200 an acre for their land. At least a half dozen people took advantage of the sale. Quarry operations began later that spring.
Extracting and crushing the rock onsite was done by Empire Limestone Company, a division of Lackawanna Steel, and once that process was done, it had to be shipped to the steel plant in West Seneca by rail. In the fall of 1908, New York Central Railroad applied to the New York State Public Service Commission for a permit to construct a branch line (spur) from the crossing at Shawnee and Saunders Settlement roads to the quarry in Pekin. Permission was granted and the Cambria Branch/Pekin Railroad began running in 1909.
According to a map found on OpenStreetMap.org, the spur headed northwest and crossed Human Road; continued northwest and crossed Bear Road and then Upper Mountain Road just west of Bear Road; from there it continued northwest until making a turn west just south of Lower Mountain Road and traveling in that direction until turning northwest again to cross Townline Road at Lower Mountain Road. It continued along the rim of the escarpment before making a gradual turn southwest and ending at Upper Mountain Road across from what is now Thayer Lake in the park. A narrow gauge electric railroad was also built on the quarry property which connected with the new branch line.
For the next 15 years, Empire Limestone conducted the quarry operations mainly on the south side of Lower Mountain Road but not without issues. Numerous accidents occurred in which employees were seriously injured or even killed. In the time before the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), these workers and their families had little recourse for compensation as the company asserted that the men knew the hazards but took the jobs anyway. Then, in 1917, a 12-year-old girl was crossing the tracks of the narrow gauge railroad to get to school and stepped on an electric wire that had fallen and was so badly burned that her left leg had to be amputated. A trial ensued and a jury awarded her over $12,000. The company appealed but lost and had to pay her $15,000 in 1920. This marked the beginning of the decline in quarry operations in Pekin by the Lackawanna Steel Company.
NEXT WEEK: Quarry properties served many purposes in the 20th century.
Ann Marie Linnabery is the assistant director of the History Center of Niagara.
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