Thomas Cornell started the Ulster and Delaware's predecessor, the Rondout and Oswego, in 1866 to get goods from Central New York to what is now Kingston, already the terminus of the Delaware and Hudson Canal, which had already established itself as the main route carrying coal from Northeast Pennsylvania to New York City via the Hudson River. Phoenicia would be for a long time the western terminus of its narrow gauge lines, with a branch, the Stony Clove and Catskill Mountain Railroad, going up Stony Clove Notch to Hunter in 1882.