Today’s postal delivery in Niagara County bears little resemblance to its earliest counterpart. The first postal service in this area was from Canandaigua to Fort Niagara, a route that was established on March 3, 1797 by act of Congress. A lone rider traveling on horseback from Canandaigua through Batavia and Cold Spring delivered the mail every two weeks. This route became known as the Lewiston Trail. An overnight stop was eventually added for the post rider at the corner of Chestnut Ridge Road and Cold Spring Road. If you wished to send mail back with the rider, you would take it to the inn established at this corner. The first mail arrived at Fort Niagara in October of 1797.

Even though this route was changed to include Buffalo in 1804, there was no effective way to get there from Fort Niagara, so the post rider actually had to cross into Canada by ferry at the Falls and re-cross the river by ferry again at Buffalo. By 1810, Congress authorized a post-road so the mail riders did not have to deliver the mail via Canada. A new road was opened in 1816 that joined up with the Ridge Road and additional mail stops were added in Gaines, Hartland and Cambria by 1816-17. It wasn’t until Erie County was separated out from Niagara County in 1821 that Lockport became the county seat for Niagara County and established its first post office in 1822.

At first, the recipient of the mail paid the cost of postage, and it was said a prepaid letter was an insult because it implied the receiver was too poor to pay for his own mail. Some balk today at the cost of 41 cents to mail a letter, but when mail service was first organized; it was actually even more expensive. A single sheet letter from New York City to Buffalo cost 25 cents and if you added an enclosure, the cost would be 75 cents. Pretty steep postage in light of the fact that a day’s wages was barely a dollar.

Douglas Farley, Director
Erie Canal Discover Center
24 Church St.
Lockport NY 14094
716.439.0431
CanalDiscovery@aol.com
www.NiagaraHistory.org