Buffalo Harbor

Buffalo Harbor evolved from a shallow creek-mouth anchorage into a major port through repeated reconstruction and expansion. Villagers built the first harbor in 1820 and 1821 in 221 working days under Judge Samuel Wilkeson, using dams to divert Buffalo Creek and creating a 100-foot-wide, 8-foot-deep shipping channel between twin stone-and-timber piers. Early aids to navigation included Buffalo's first lighthouse at the creek mouth and a private beacon for the steamship Walk-in-the-Water, later replaced in 1833 by the still-standing stone lighthouse. After Buffalo became a port of entry in 1805 and the Erie Canal opened in 1825, federal control, pier strengthening, a seawall, connecting slips, canal extensions, and new facilities such as the Blackwell or City Ship Canal, Ohio Slip and Basin, and a detached breakwater supported growing trade. After the Civil War, record traffic, including 16,390 arrivals and departures in 1862, drove construction of the artificial outer harbor, beginning in 1868 with breakwaters that eventually extended south to Stony Point and north toward the Black Rock entrance channel. By the early twentieth century, Buffalo had the world's longest breakwater system and ranked behind New York and Chicago as the nation's third-busiest port, serving grain, ore, coal, passenger traffic, and industrial growth such as the arrival of Lackawana Steel Co. In the twentieth century, the harbor was adapted for St. Lawrence Seaway shipping with deeper channels, a new north entrance cut in 1961, and the West Breakwater. Even as commercial activity reached peaks such as 120 grain boats wintering there in 1924 and 24.3 million tons of cargo handled in 1942, larger changes after the Seaway's opening in 1958 hastened a shift from heavy commerce toward recreational boating, parks, marinas, and nature preserves.

Buffalo, New York · United States