It was originally planned as part of a connecting line between the East Coast of the United States and Buffalo, New York.

The railroad was incorporated on February 17, 1870 to run from the vicinity of Williamsport to Jersey Shore, up Pine Creek and down the Allegheny River to Port Allegany,[1][2] as part of a route to Buffalo.

[3] While it was organized under a new charter, this represented a continuation of the Jersey Shore, Pine Creek and State Line Railroad project; that corporation had made surveys up Pine Creek with the aim of connecting with another railroad on the northern border of the state, possibly extending as far west as McKean County to do so.

[5] McClellan was then president of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad, which shipped petroleum to New York City over the Erie Railway.

The coal beds along the Allegheny River west of Coudersport were proclaimed "worthless" by the State Geological Survey in 1885,[7] nor could the local iron ore deposits be economically worked.

The solution decided upon was that the coal companies, backed by the NYC, would build a new rail line into the Clearfield Coalfield and open new mines there.

[4] He took advantage of a provision of the railroad's charter allowing for branches of up to thirty miles in any county traversed by the main line[5] to build a new connection from the Fall Brook's Corning, Cowanesque and Antrim Railroad at Stokesdale Junction, near Wellsboro, and follow Marsh Creek to Pine Creek and the original JSPC&B route at Ansonia, and then pass downstream to Jersey Shore and the Reading connection at Newberry.

The JSPC&B continued construction on the route from Newberry to Stokesdale Junction, which ran through the spectacular Pine Creek Gorge (also known as the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania) below Ansonia.

[1][12] The new line was not directly operated by the New York Central; rather, on December 18, 1882, it was leased to the Fall Brook Coal Company from the date of completion (officially June 30, 1883) for twenty years.

In 1895, the NYC began to investigate buying out the Fall Brook, which now formed a vital link between the New York Central main line and the NYC-controlled Beech Creek Railroad at Jersey Shore.