Portage Road

For centuries, Native Americans, explorers, traders, and soldiers used the portage around Niagara Falls and the Niagara Gorge to move between Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, and the continent's interior. Before long-term settlement by the Neutral Nation along the Niagara River, the Hopewell people and nomads had used the portage, and in 1650 the Seneca Nation took control of it from the Neutrals. In 1679 the French explorer LaSalle portaged around the falls and built the Griffon on the riverbank near Cayuga Creek for exploration of the upper Great Lakes. In 1720 Chabert Joncaire built a French trading post at the lower landing near present-day Lewiston, with the Senecas employed to carry goods over the portage. After British forces took Fort Niagara and the portage in 1759, they built a tramway at the escarpment and used carriages to move goods over the road to the upper river, ending Seneca employment there. In 1796 American companies led by Augustus and Peter Porter, Benjamin Barton, and Joseph Annin leased and managed the portage after the American Revolution, hotels and taverns appeared along the route, and the falls began attracting tourists. During the War of 1812, British troops seized the route in 1813 and burned most buildings on the American side of the Niagara River before Americans regained control after the war. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 made the portage route obsolete, and it became Portage Road. The route existed because boats and goods had to be carried around the falls and gorge and up the Niagara Escarpment, a geologic barrier about 250 feet high, after which the road extended south southeast about 7 miles to navigable water above the falls.

Niagara Falls, New York · United States