Bellevue was one of the earliest settlements in Cheektowaga, where the Ely family settled and established one of the first saw mills along Cayuga Creek; members of the family were abolitionists who maintained an Underground Railroad station for escaped slaves traveling north to the Niagara River. In the 1880s, wealthy businessmen organized the Bellevue Land and Improvement Co. and bought thousands of acres around Cayuga Creek, and the construction of the Buffalo-Bellevue-Lancaster Electric Railway trolley line from the city line through Bellevue to Depew and Lancaster spurred the area's development. A powerhouse built to generate electric current for the trolley became the center of Bellevue Park, a roughly 30-acre park with swings, maypoles, a ballpark, a pond created by damming the creek for paddleboats, and large dining and dance halls. For more than fifteen years, the park was a popular destination for family excursions, and traveling gypsies camped along Como Park Boulevard and entertained visitors with fortune-telling and performances. Today, remnants of the dam are all that remain of the park, now part of Reinstein Woods, while the Bellevue Hotel survives as the only structure from this era; it provided entertainment and a layover for park visitors, and the now-vanished Broken Knuckle Tavern was known for fist fights and police intervention. In the early 1900s, Dr. Anna Reinstein, a Russian immigrant and the mother of Dr. Victor Reinstein, bought large tracts from the trolley firm and developed much of the Bellevue neighborhood, and the Reinstein home still stands along the creek on Danforth Street while more than 200 acres became Reinstein Woods, a wildlife sanctuary maintained by New York State.