When Crane and Dickinson Were Actual Ports

Binghamton Press

November 24, 2015

                       

                        By Gerald Smith, Broome County Historian

    When you try to describe where things are in a particular area, you begin to fall into the common habit of speaking in the vernacular — using the local lingo to tell that person how to get somewhere. Of course, those of us who have grown up here have no problem with that, but consider the stranger and the often-confused looks we see after using that local description.

    In two instances, we might get those strange looks. It has happened to me when I tell them about taking the Brandywine Highway up past Port Dickinson and then Port Crane. In the first instance, some people are aware that the village of Port Dickinson was named in honor of Daniel Dickinson, our leading political figure for much of the 19th century.

    The other question arises when you try and describe Port Crane. First, it is not an incorporated place,  there are no specific boundaries, mayor or local council. It is a hamlet — much like Castle Creek, or Endwell, or many other places in the local region. Most of us know where it is, but not how it got its name.

    The answer to that question is connected to why we have ports in Broome County. We don’t really have dozens of large boats trying to unload goods along our river banks — there are no big paddlewheel boats like you might have seen on the Mississippi. But we do have two ports.

    They owe their name to being a stop on the route of the Chenango Canal. The canal opened up in 1837 and closed by 1878. It followed the route of the Chenango River valley. While the packet boats that carried passengers certainly were a large part of the traffic on this man-made waterway, it was the movement of cargo that represented much of the canal’s business. Coal was the major product moved on those packet boats, and north of Binghamton were the two stops that each were named ports along the canal.

    The name of Crane was given to the stop above Port Dickinson to honor Jason Crane. He was a prominent engineer who helped to construct the Chenango Canal as it reached this region from the northern terminus in Utica. The area already had a post office by 1842, and in 1855, the entire town would be named Port Crane when it was separated from the Town of Chenango.

    By 1867, the town portion was renamed the Town of Fenton in honor of Governor Reuben E. Fenton. But the hamlet of Port Crane remained with that name. It also developed around the stop on the canal. It had a dry dock, a blacksmith shop, a grocery store, a copper shop, a doctor’s office, a hotel and even a stove factory.

    While being positioned next to the canal was advantageous in the early years with the hopes of its economic success, it never came to fruition. The canal promised so much but never fulfilled those promises. It never made a profit. The numbers of packet boats travelling into Broome County were fewer than predicted.

    While the movement of coal into stops like Port Dickinson and Port Crane helped, it never brought them to the level of activity that centered on Binghamton, where several railroads converged. The constant economic loss in the operation of the Chenango Canal took its toll. Areas would begin to grow and then stop as more and more people traveled on the rail lines that came through the same area.

A 1920s photograph of the remains of Lock 107 of the Chenango Canal, which is now owned by the New York State Parks Department. (Photo: Putnam Collection, Broome County Public Library)

    Eventually, Port Crane would have its own railroad station, and its economic growth seemed to stabilize.

    Many of the families around the hamlet have been living there for multiple generations. There is still the post office, there are still stores. The former elementary school is now used as the town hall and for an office for the state police. Churches still ring their bells, and the train still travels the line, but the days of the canal and the stop in one of our two “ports” is now over.