1851.

ERIE INCORPORATED A CITY.

999

Legislature of that State, in the session of 1851, and was in its charter gifted with very extensive franchises and powers.

The road is remarkable for its unusual length; commencing at Cairo, at the juncture of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and extending through the centre of the State, to the North-West corner of the same, opposite Dubuque, it runs over a distance of seven hundred miles, (including Chicago branch,) traversing in its course a greater extent of fertile land, that is susceptible of the highest degree of cultivation, than probably any other railroad in the world.

In 1851, Erie, Pennsylvania, was incorporated as a city. As this place is, as it were, the gate of Western History, a short sketch of its origin will not be inappropriate in this place.

Early in the year 1753, while the entire North-West was still a vast, almost untrodden wilderness, and when the waters of the northern lakes had as yet been undisturbed, excepting only by the elements, and the light ripple caused by the Indian's paddle, or occasionally the boat oar of some lonely voyageur, or of some one of the Jesuits, who even then were living on the Canadian side below   at that time the French were the first among the whites, to land upon those lake-washed shores, and on the site of the present city of Erie, they erected a fort, to which they gave the name of "Fort Presque Isle." *

This was the first of a series of military posts wdiich they established, for the purpose of connecting their possessions on the St. Lawrence with "the beautiful river," (La belle Rioiere) the Ohio, and thence with their posts on the Mississippi. In 1760, this fort was surrendered to the British; but three years later its weak garrison was overcome and massacred by the Indians, under the guidance of Pontiac,! and thenceforth again at Presque Isle the lake-wave sported along the shores of a wilderness, and the Indian's whoop was once more echoed back by solitary forests.

In the year 1789, the Indian title to that portion of Erie county called "the Triangle," was at last extinguished, and in 1792, the tract was purchased from the United States. In 1796, the place became interesting by the death aud burial there of General Wayne.J

The town was first permanently settled and laid out in 1795, and.

* See anto, pngo 103, in Coffen's narrative. JErio Directory, published 1853.

j See ante, page 108.