The Sackets Harbor & Ellisburgh Railroad Company

Two railroads used to run between Watertown and Sacketts Harbor. This one is the Sackets Harbor and Ellisburgh, which ran north and south. The other one was built by the Carthage Watertown & Sackets Harbor Railroad and ran east and west. You can see a small portion of it at the very top of the map above. The only railbed shared between the two railroads was the portion of the curve into Sackets Harbor starting where it turns to the northwest.

The map above left (with the purple line) uses the 1965 topographic map data. The railroad is drawn only where the map doesn't show it. The middle map above is a large scan (1MByte and 1458x5000 pixels) of a color photocopy of the 1855 map, which shows the route of the SHnE. A monochrome scan of the whole map is available on the Town of Hounsfield website. The map on the right is selected portions of the Army Mapping Service (AMS) Sackets Harbor, Henderson, and Adams quads. If you click on it, you'll get an extremely large image (640K and 2000x5500 pixels) which shows the entire route of the railroad in great detail. You can also see the originals of the AMS maps. They date from the 1940's and they show almost the entire length of the railbed. The route is also listed in OpenStreetMap.

On other pages, we have a timeline, a report of field work done in 8/2002 and 5/2003 by Russell Nelson and Richard Palmer with help from Sackets Harbor resident Bob Brennan. Shirley Farone, a Jefferson County resident, has a page with more research by Richard Palmer, covering the RW&O and the SH&E. On 7Mar2004, Russell Nelson found the roadbed to the west of I81. On 17Jul2004, he hiked up the CSX right-of-way and found the roadbed to the east of I81. He writes "Even before I got to the spot, I could see a notch in the treeline where the SH&E took off to the west." It's been perfectly preserved, being in the no-man's land between the CSX tracks and I81. You can get a strong sense of the low-investment character of the railroad. They basically pushed the rocks off to the side, scraped off the topsoil, dug some drainage ditches, and put the ties on the subsoil that remained. Since the ties were removed, and there was never any ballast, there is essentially no evidence that the right-of-way was ever a railroad.

The Library of Congress has Historic Railroad Maps from 1828 to 1900. Excellent resource! There is a section for New York State-only maps. The 1855 map shows the SH&E. You have to zoom in on it; the image below is taken from the zoomed view. You can also see the RW&O Cape Vincent line with which the SH&E was competing.

Dick Palmer found a timetable on page 82 of the American Railway Guide and Pocket Companion, Edited By R.S. Fisher, New York: Jauary, 1856:

Sackets Harbor & Ellisburgh R.R.
C.W. Bishop, Pres., Henderson.  J. Collamer, Supt., Watertown, N.Y.

Pierrepont Manor to Sackets Harbor
Leave Pierrepont Manor 9:30 a.m. 6:30 p.m.
Leave Belleville  9:46 p.m.  6:50 p.m.     5 miles
Leave Henderson   10 a..m.   7:10 p.m.     9 miles
Leave Smithville  10:16 a.m. 7:20 p.m.    13 miles
Arrive Sackets Harbor 10:20 a.m. 8 p.m.   18 miles

Sackets Harbor to Pierrepont Manor
Leave Sackets Harbor 7 a.m.  4:15 p.m.
Leave Smithville     7:25 a.m. 4:25 p.m.    5 miles
Leave Henderson      7:45 a.m. 4:50 p.m.    9 miles
Leave Belleville     8:05 a.m  5:05 p.m.    12 miles
Arrive Pierrepont Manor 8:30 a.m. 5:22 p.m. 18 miles

Railroad Connection with Watertown & Rome R.R. Pierrepont Manor. Oct. 15, 1855

Here's a list of aerial photos from north to south along the railbed of the Sackets Harbor & Ellisburgh Railroad Company. You can see how much still remains (the aerial photos date from 1995) and how much has been erased by the plow and bulldozer. Even where it has been erased by plowing, you can still see a mark in many fencelines where the railbed once crossed it.

• one, which shows the U&BR at the top. See the road slanting from top left to bottom right? The railroad connects to the U&BR nearly at the top, crosses the road in the middle, and crosses the road slanting to the SW at about the middle of the bottom.
• two, see the big curve in the bottom 2/3rds of the center of this photo? The 7.5' map at Topozone has it.
• three, heads due south in the middle of the picture
• four, the dot marks the easternmost point of the railbed, as it curves in this picture.
• five, south of the road is quite visible. North is not quite so visible.
• six, cuts a chord through the left side of the circle. It's the boundary between fields that continues across the E/W road at the bottom.
• seven, south of the center cross, the railbed starts to curve to the east, visible as a shadow in the plowed field. North where it crosses the road is a line of trees.
• eight, is very hard to see here, but at the top of the photo you can see a shadow in the field going slightly west of north. The center cross is where it crosses the stream. South of the center cross, it passes just to the left of the cemetary, and as far as we can tell (from fieldwork), it is the driveway of the house on the south side of the road.
• nine, visible as a shadow in the field at the north, disappears about where the center cross is, curves to the west, and exits on the left side. The 7.5' map at Topozone has it.
• ten, it's the fence line sloping from NE to SW.
• eleven, it's obliterated in the field about in the middle, but continues off the lower-left bottom edge.
• twelve, on the ground, you would see nothing. You can only follow it paralleling the N/S road because this is an aerial photo. The railbed crosses the bent road just at the western end of the bend. You can see a few shadows in the fields; mostly to the south.
• thirteen, it's all but invisible in these photos. Only the barest hint of it still paralleling the N/S road. "Bishop Street" is the name of the corners in the top-left.
• fourteen, more obvious at the bottom of this photo than the top. There are a few scattered rocks near the creek at the center cross; presumably they were the abutments of a bridge crossing the creek.
• fifteen, quite obvious now. Curves to the east at the bottom. The 7.5' map at Topozone shows the curve.
• sixteen, disappears right at a farm. But look! At the bottom right there's a shadow. Yup, that's right. You can see where it crosses the little creek. The center cross is positioned where it crossed the road.
• seveneen, goes just north of Belleville. You can connect the white streak at the top left with the dark shadow across the stream, but in-between? No idea. From fieldwork, the dark shadow across the stream is an embankment. The abutment on the east side of the stream is gone, but on the west side, the abutment is in quite good shape.
• The 7.5' map at Topozone marks the dark shadow as a railroad grade, as do the AMS maps.
• eighteen, pretty obvious from Belleville to here. Disappears at a farm, though. Been plowed into history.
• nineteen, and this looks to be where it connects to the RW&O. See the curve in the middle where it crosses I81? The angle matches the one where it disappears at the farm in the previous photo. It seems to cross the Wardell Settlement Road and the South Sandy Creek at about the same point, slightly north of it anyway. On the 7.5' Topozone map, you can follow the marked "Old Railroad Grade" on a straight line across the creek. On an older revision of the 7.5' map (I failed to write down the date, but it was in the 1950's), before I81 was built, you can see the curve marked as an old railroad grade.