Lehigh Valley Railroad Canal & Basins (Site) (Buffalo, New York)

 historical layer / disappeared object, canal basin

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Dug out in the mid-19th century following the purchase of land previously owned by cattle farmer George W. Tifft and the City of Buffalo by the Lehigh Valley Railroad, the Lehigh Valley Railroad Canal connected the existing City Ship Canal to a deepwater basin dug out of the low-lying pasture land. Equipped with three separate lobes, each of which could accommodate multiple freighters at the same time, the basins and canal were used extensively for much of the next century and became the primary transhipment point for iron ore, grain and lumber cargoes from the Great Lakes onto the LVRR system for distribution to East Coast ports and industrial center, while also moving anthracite coal from Pennsylvania and finished goods from eastern industrial centers throughout the lakes. From 1880 through 1920, much of this freight moved aboard LVRR's own fleet of steamships, operated by the Lehigh Valley Transportation Line.

At their height, the entire Easternmost/Innermost basin was dedicated to the transhipment of iron ore cargoes, with as many as eight dedicated railroad tracks situated beneath its gantries and along its outdoor storage area. The central basin was entirely dedicated to coal transhipment, with five dedicated railroad tracks serving the gantries and crushing machinery unloading railcars onto freighters throughout the busy shipping season. Remaining operational well into the 1950's and continuing to operate at near-capacity, the basins were eventually undercut by their own dimensions, which had become too small to permit the newer and larger lake freighters plying the trades. Further impacted by the opening of the New York State Thruway, the death knell for the LVRR canal and basin came in 1955 when a new and fully modernized LVRR terminal opened up further up the banks of the City Ship Canal, which had neither a size nor airdraft restriction for freighters.

Sold to the City of Buffalo, the basins were idled for shipping and eventually cut off from the City Ship Canal in 1958 as part of the buildup of Route 5 and the Buffalo Skyway. Following the dewatering of the Easternmost lobe in 1959, the City used the basin as a trash landfill site for municipal waste through the late 1960's, eventually filling much of the Northern portion before public outcry caused all dumping at the site to cease. With the dumpsite consolidated, capped and sealed by 1972, efforts were undertaken to convert the former port and dump to a nature preserve, which formally opened as the Tifft Nature Preserve in 1976 and continues to operate as a public park and nature educational center.