economic opportunity, likely would have re-entered politics after the rails were laid that brought prosperity to Jefferson County. But his unexpected death at age 61 precluded this outcome. A late 19th-century historian stated the following: Railroad President After his shot at higher political office ended, Orville Hungerford began to refocus his energies on establishing the Watertown & Rome Railroad. The Erie Canal was opened in 1825 and many in the North County thought it unnecessary to develop a new mode of transportation to move goods and people. In the early 1830s, Clarke Rice thought otherwise and built a miniature model train, which he and William Smith displayed in the upper floor of a house on Factory Street in Watertown, New York. Clarke believed that steam power on rail would supersede steam power dependent on a waterway. Clarke convinced his fellow masonic brother and the area's premier business person, Orville Hungerford, that Watertown was doomed as a backwater without a more modern connection to the commercial hub of the country, New York City. After all, the roads out of Watertown were slow and even slower in the rain and snow. In 1922, Edward Hungerford, author of several railroad books, described the magnitude of considering the adaptation of the latest transportation technology, barely tested, in a still remote area of the country: In 1832, merchant Orville Hungerford and fellow railroad enthusiast Major Edward Kirby took the stage coach from Watertown at an early hour to eventually connect with a packet boat on the Erie Canal in Utica, New York and then make many additional stops until finally reaching New York City. A railroad would shorten this 4-day journey considerably. On April 17, 1832, the New York legislature incorporated the Watertown & Rome Railroad, naming Hungerford as one of its commissioners charged with promoting the line. Although, the initial act called for track to be laid within three years and the line to be completed within five years, a shortage of capital forced the promoters to seek extensions of the charter in 1837, 1845, and 1847 at which point Orville was elected its first president. Hungerford played a key role in raising the necessary capital to complete the railroad. A notice in a Watertown newspaper dated May 5, 1847 stated the following: In the summer of 1847, the Board of Directors voted to allocate $500 so that Hungerford and three other railroad directors