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This webpage is being presented in celebration of New York State History Month - 1999 . In 1792 the New York Legislature granted a charter to General Philip Schuyler, a hero of the late war and resident of Albany, to form an enterprise called the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company. This company was to undertake improvements in the linked network of inland waterways that crossed New York State and provided access to the Great Lakes decades before the Erie Canal. This stream was so narrow that travelers often recorded they could jump across it where the boats first entered it, and it was so deficient of water that boatmen often had to negotiate with a miller just above the landing place to release extra water from his pond to get the boats floated and on their way. Yet in spite of its fragility, Wood Creek was the lynchpin of the waterway route to the Great Lakes.