Like other growing towns and cities, Batavia needed access to affordable and reliable commercial transportation services.
Instead, canal designers selected Eighteen Mile Creek as the area to scale the formidable Niagara Escarpment.
The Tonawanda Railroad was chartered on 24 April 1832 for the purpose of building a rail line from Rochester to Attica and eventually Buffalo.
Historian Edward Dunn questions the derivation of the naming, as the eleven miles of line constructed up the valley of the Tonawanda Creek to Attica was an afterthought.
In 1836 the road was completed to South Byron, about eight miles Northeast of Batavia, and cars were run as far as that point, horses furnishing the motive power.
The road as originally mapped out was to run North of Main street in Batavia and the depot was to be located near the present site of Mr. George BRISBANE's residence.
After Mr. OSBORNE's death his son presented the book to the Buffalo Historical Society, which now has it among many interesting and valuable relics of the pioneer days of Western New York.
The opening of the road from Rochester to Batavia was celebrated May 8th, 1837, with a grand demonstration, great crowds coming from the surrounding country to see the first locomotive.