Two Transit Roads
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Straight roads aren't uncommon of course, but not many have histories that go back as far as these two that cross the Erie Canal in Western New York State.
Joseph Ellicott was the resident general agent of the Holland Land Company, which owned the 3.3 million acre tract that today is Western New York State. It was his job to survey and to sell the land in this region to settlers.
Western New York was an unbroken virgin forest widerness then. Joseph Ellicott first commissioned two surveys starting at the Pennsylvania border and running all the way north to Lake Ontario. That required that the trees on these lines be cut down to allow their transit instruments to see to take their measurements. Local residents often made use of these cleared lanes, and some of them remain roads to this day.
