* * * * * The Black River road thrust itself into Lowville in the fall of 1868. Four years later it had reached Carthage. The next year it was at the bank of the St. Lawrence, at Clayton. And before the end of the following year it again touched with its rails the shore of that great river; at both Morristown and Ogdensburgh. As railroads went, in those days, it was at last a through-route; with important connections at both of its terminals. At Utica it had fine shop and yard facilities adjoining the tracks of the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, whose venerable passenger station it shared. And, when at one time, it sought a close personal connection for itself with the Ontario & Western there, it builded an expensive bridge connection over the New York Central tracks. This bridge is now gone, but the piers remain. At both Clayton and Ogdensburgh the Black River road possessed fine waterside terminals. Its station in the latter city still stands; for many years it has been the local storage warehouse of Armour & Co., of Chicago. * * * * * In the busy months that the Utica & Black River was building its line up through Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties, a railroad was being builded from it at Carthage down the lower valley of the Black River to Watertown and to Sackett's Harbor. This was distinctly a local enterprise; the Carthage, Watertown & Sackett's Harbor, financed and built almost entirely by Watertownians and retaining its separate corporate existence until but a few years ago. It was inspired not only by the great success of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh at that time, but by the quite natural desire of the one really industrial city of the North Country to have competitive railroad service. There have been few times when there were not in Watertown a generous plenty of men who stood ready to put their hands deep into their pockets in order to promote an enterprise whose value seemed so obvious and so genuinely important to the town. So it was then that the Carthage, Watertown & Sackett's Harbor first came into its existence, there at the extreme end of the sixties; in the very year that Watertown itself was first becoming a city. Its officers and directors as it was first organized were as follows: _President_, GEORGE B. PHELPS, Watertown _Secretary and Treasurer_, LOTUS INGALLS, Watertown _Engineer_, F. A. HINDS, Watertown _Directors_ George P. Phelps, Watertown Lotus Ingalls, Watertown Norris Winslow, Watertown Pearson Mundy, Watertown L. D. Doolittle, Watertown George H. Sherman, Watertown George A. Bagley, Watertown Hiram Converse, Watertown Theodore Canfield, Sackett's Harbor Walter B. Camp, Sackett's Harbor David Dexter, Black River William N. Coburn, Carthage Alexander Brown, Carthage