This place became a meeting point when the Genesee Valley Canal opened in 1840 as Cox's Basin, where boats were loaded and turned around. After railroads replaced the canal after 1880, it became Wadsworth Junction, named for the Wadsworth family who owned much of the adjacent land, and served as a junction for Lehigh Valley trains traveling between Buffalo and Geneva and Pennsylvania trains traveling between Rochester and Hinsdale. A track linking the Pennsylvania and Lehigh Valley Railroads stood on the earthen embankment to the northwest. After the Pennsylvania Railroad abandoned the tracks south of here in 1963, it used Lehigh Valley tracks to bring coal and miscellaneous freight from Buffalo, then used the spur to reach remaining Pennsylvania tracks and continue north to Rochester. The rail line north to Rochester was abandoned and its tracks removed after the Pennsylvania Railroad merged with the New York Central in 1968. Stone structures on either side of the Greenway were part of a very long trestle built in 1891 to carry the Lehigh Valley Railroad over the Genesee River, its flood plain, and two existing north-south railroads; it had abutments, 38 piers, and extended more than a half-mile, remaining in use until 1976. Today, much of the former rail beds has been transformed into the Genesee Valley Greenway and the Lehigh Valley Trail, which intersect here.
