[2] On June 1, 1795, Perry advertised his "new town", citing its proximity to roads, mills and quarries, and claiming its harbor was "the best on the western waters.

[8][9] The construction of the Edgar Thomson Steel Works on the opposite side of Turtle Creek in the 1870s doomed Port Perry.

As railroad operations at the works expanded over the decades, properties in the town were bought up and razed to make room for tracks and yards.

[8] Despite a terminally declining population, Port Perry remained a site of major rail and river traffic flows.

In 1914, articles in the trade journals Railway Review and Steel and Iron claimed, on the basis of statistics compiled by the Pittsburgh Industrial Development Commission, that more annual tonnage of freight passed Port Perry than any other point in the world.