THE season of 1833 formed an era in the prosperity of Saratoga Springs as a watering place. In that year the railroad was extended to Saratoga, and was, I believe the second passenger railroad that was completed in the United States. {The first railway in the United States was one of two miles long, from Milton to Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1826. The cars were drawn by horses. The Baltimore and Ohio was the first passenger railway in America, fifteen miles being opened in 1830, the cars being drawn by horses till the next year, when a locomotive was put on the track, built by Davis, of York, Pennsylvania. It had an upright boiler and cylinder. The Mohawk and Hudson, sixteen miles, from Albany to Schenectady, was the next line, opened in 1831, and the cars were drawn by horses till the delivery of the locomotive "De Witt Clinton," which was built at the West Point Foundry, New York. This was the second locomotive built in the United States; the first was made at the same shop for the South Carolina Railway. The termini both at Schenectady and Albany were upon inclined planes, with stationary engines. The first engine, with a train of "carriages" (as they were then called), passed up the road from Schenectady to Saratoga on the 4 ^th of July, 1833 – Warren B.B. Westcott, who was at Ballston at the time, distinctly remembering the novel spectacle. As mentioned in the preceding chapter, the railroad from Schenectady to Saratoga, begun in the summer of 1831, had been carried the succeeding year only as far as Ballston. {The Schenectady and Saratoga Railroad was undertaken by an incorporated company with a capital stock of $180,000. The total income was estimated at $72,000, and the net revenue at $51,000. On July 7, 1832, the road was first opened from Schenectady to Ballston. The time made that day from Ballston to Schenectady was one hour and twenty-eight minutes! And the number of passengers on the Saratoga and Schenectady Railroad during the month of April, 1833, was 1,240, "being more," as a Saratoga paper says, "than four times the travel between Saratoga and the South during any former month so early in the season." The trains, however, had not regularly even up to that point, and the usual route was still from Albany to Saratoga by fine post-coaches at a dollar a fare. With the completion, however, of the railroad to Saratoga the crisis was passed. "The number of strangers now in this village," says Mr. Gideon M. Davison in his paper of July 7, 1833, "cannot be less than 1,000 – at least twice as many as are ordinarily here at this season of the year." Since then each successive season, with a few exceptions – such as the cholera year of 1849 and the one succeeding the burning of Congress Hall – has been one of increasing prosperity. {The difficulty experienced in "Regatta" week, 1874, in carrying the crowds to the Lake – distant only three and a half miles – shows how impossible it would be with no railroad to bring that number from Albany to Saratoga.}

The ground for the new road was first broken in the village in the month of September, 1831, which circumstance was celebrated by a grand procession. The news had spread like wildfire through the country, and on the day of its occurrence, hundreds of farmers for miles around drove in to witness the august event. Among those was W.B.B. Westcott, who, a little boy at that time, came with his father into the village. The procession formed in Broadway, in front of the old Columbian Hotel, and then moved up Church Street through an opening in a thick pine wood in the rear of the Presbyterian Church (now the Commercial Hotel), to about the site of the present depot. Here it halted, and, after several speeches had been made by Churchill C. Cambreling (M.C. from New York City) and other prominent citizens, six Irish laborers in the procession bearing shovels threw up a few spadefuls of earth, and the ceremony of breaking ground was pronounced complete. After the ground had been thus broken, a dinner was partaken of, when the procession was reformed and returned to the Columbian. During the march back, however, it halted to witness a grand exhibition given by Nathaniel Waterbury of pulling stumps with his new machine, which was then a great novelty. {The farms of Waterbury, Samuel Hoyt (the old Beach place), and Jacob Denton (father of Myron) were all cleared with this same machine – as, indeed, the stumps comprising the fences, and yet standing, bear witness.} While the procession was marching, Augustus Trim, then a dipping boy at Congress Spring, assisted in firing a cannon from the present Temple Grove, near the large pine-tree south of the present Circular Railroad – "Primus" Budd having the fuse and Dick Sprutt holding the vent. Fourteen guns in all were fired during the celebration, from signals given from the top of the old Pavilion Hotel.

The first depot was where the Marvin House now stands, and the ticket agent was the late Daniel D. Benedict. The cars, which are described as spacious and elegant (what would then have been thought of the Pullman and Wagner Palace Cars?), had each, like the railway carriages in Europe, three compartments, curtained and cushioned and intended to contain eight passengers. Outside was a platform running the length of the car, for the convenience of the conductor, who, while the cars were in motion, would, with one arm thrown around a window-casing for support, with the other collect the fares. This, however, was not so hazardous a proceeding as might be supposed, since the cars, which the first year were drawn by horses, travelled only at the rate of nine miles an hour. {Even so late as 1849, the cars during that winter were drawn to Schenectady by horses – owing to some derangement, at the time, of the locomotive.} The first conductors were "Bill" Smith, "Cheese" Burtis, Horace Kelly, and George Elsworth; and the two wheel-horses were named "Turk" and "Dick"; Captain Dexter was one of the drivers, and George Long was at this period the "Express," said express consisting of himself and a little leather bag, with which he went daily between Albany and Saratoga. {George Long, who is yet at his post as chief baggage-master, is a man of an iron frame and withal of great probity of character. One day preceding Christmas, before the days of railroads, he walked from Albany to Whitehall – a distance seventy-five miles – between 4 A.M. and 8 P.M. to spend the Christmas with his aged mother. So much for his physique!} Benjamin Eldridge (father of Thomas) was the first cartman, and his advertisement in the newspapers of that time, announcing himself and one horse as at the service of the public, is quite quaint and curious in its character.

The cars with horses were a great novelty, but when steam was substituted for horse-power the astonishment knew no bounds. Every day, on the arrival and departure of the train, one hundred to a hundred and fifty people would go up to the depot to see the new wonder of the age; and once, when the cars broke away from their couplings and ran down into Broadway, great was the scattering and consternation. The two locomotives, which were brought from England, were called the "Fire Fly" and the "David Crockett." These names were very appropriate (much more so than those given at the present day), the last one, especially, as it recalled the favorite motto of the old backwoodsman – "Be sure you’re right, then go ahead!" Once, however, the "David Crockett" failed to live up to the motto of its illustrious namesake; and, as the instance illustrates the power of the locomotives of those days, it is worthy of mention. On one occasion in the month of July, as the "Crockett" was speeding along between Saratoga and Ballston, a bull planted himself squarely in its front. On came the engine; but, marvellous to relate, the "Crockett" and three cars were thrown off the track , and the bull, which had been overthrown by the collision, got up, shook himself, and although somewhat demoralized, walked deliberately off! {George Stephenson, the first one to utilize steam on railroads, evidently never could have foreseen this instance, when, on being asked in Parliament (before which he was urging an appropriation for his railroad to Edinburgh), "Suppose a cow should be on the track?" he replied, "Then, my lords, it would be very bad for the cow !"}