Cornelius Vanderbilt had in 1870 consolidated two of his key lines into the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, one of the first giant corporations in American history.

In 1869, he had directed the Harlem to begin construction of the Grand Central Depot on 42nd Street in Manhattan.

Finished in 1871, it serves as his lines' terminus in New York.

He has sunk the tracks on 4th Avenue in a cut that will later become a tunnel, and 4th Avenue has become Park Avenue.

He also donates to churches around New York, including a gift to the Moravian Church on Staten Island of eight and a half acres (thirty-four thousand square meters) for a cemetery in which he will eventually be buried.

Vanderbilt had relinquished his presidency of the Stonington Railroad during the California gold rush, but during the 1850s had taken an interest in several railroads , serving on the boards of directors of the Erie Railway, the Central Railroad of New Jersey, the Hartford and New Haven, and the New York and Harlem (popularly known as the Harlem).

In 1863, Vanderbilt had taken control of the Harlem in a famous stockmarket corner, and had been elected its president.

He will later explain that he had wanted to show that he could take this railroad, which was generally considered worthless, and make it valuable.

It has a key advantage: it is the only steam railroad to enter the center of Manhattan, running down 4th Avenue (later Park Avenue) to a station on 26th Street, where it connects with a horse-drawn streetcar line.

From Manhattan it runs up to Chatham Four Corners, in upstate New York, where it has a connection to the railroads running east and west.

Vanderbilt had brought his son William Henry Vanderbilt in as vice-president of the Harlem.

William had had a nervous breakdown early in life, and his father had sent him to a farm on Staten Island.

But he proves himself a good businessman, and had eventually becomes the head of the Staten Island Railway in 1862.

Though the Commodore had once scorned him, he is impressed by William's success, and will eventually make him operational manager of all his railroad lines.

In 1864, the Commodore had sold his last ships, concentrating on railroads.

Once in charge of the Harlem, Vanderbilt had encountered conflicts with connecting lines.

In each case, the strife had ended in a battle that Vanderbilt won.

He bought control of the Hudson River Railroad in 1864, the New York Central Railroad in 1867, and the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway in 1869.

He later bought the Canada Southern as well.

Vanderbilt gives one million dollars to found Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, the largest charitable gift in American history to this date.

Vanderbilt sees this gift as an olive branch to the South, after he had helped defeat the Confederate States Army with his USS Vanderbilt during the Civil War.

However, he will never visit the university.

He also buys a church for fifty thousand dollars for his second wife's congregation, the Church of the Strangers.

Following his wife's death in 1868, Vanderbilt had gone to Canada where, on August 21, 1869, he married a cousin from Mobile, Alabama, named Frank Armstrong Crawford.

Crawford is forty-three years younger than her husband.

Crawford's cousin's husband, Holland McTyeire, has persuaded Vanderbilt to endow what will become Vanderbilt University, named in his honor.

Standard Oil absorbs twenty-two of its twenty-six Cleveland competitors in less than four months in 1872, in what will later be known as "The Cleveland Conquest" or "The Cleveland Massacre".

John D. Rockefeller had in January 1870 formed Standard Oil of Ohio, which had rapidly become the most profitable refiner in Ohio and has grown to become one of the largest shippers of oil and kerosene in the country.

The railroads are fighting fiercely for traffic and, in an attempt to create a cartel to control freight rates, had formed the South Improvement Company, a Pennsylvania corporation, in the fall of 1871, in collusion with Standard and other oil men outside the main oil centers.

The cartel receives preferential treatment as a high-volume shipper, which includes not just steep rebates of up to fifty percent for their product, but also rebates for the shipment of competing products.

Founded by Thomas A. Scott, president of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1871-1872, the South Improvement Company had issued two thousand shares of stock, of which nine hundred are controlled by Rockefeller and his partners.

Rockefeller had then started negotiations to collude with the three major railroads running through Cleveland: the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Erie, and the New York Central.

The result of these secret negotiations were as follows: (1) The official rate per barrel from Cleveland to New York will be $2.56, but South Improvement will receive a $1.06 rebate; (2) The railroads will also pay South Improvement $1.06 per barrel of oil shipped that is not produced by South; (3) The railroads will also give reports of the shipping destinations, costs, and dates of all of South's competitors; (4) The commerce will be divided evenly among the railroads, with a double share going to Pennsylvania Railroad; and (5) South will provide tank cars and loading facilities.

The secret concessions would have helped lessen the "vicious" competition among the railroad lines by giving a steady, standardized flow of commerce, but word leaks out of the South Improvement Scheme, and the proposed one hundred percent increase in rail shipping rates inflames the independent producers and many smaller refineries.

Following a summit and vocal protest by the independent oil producers and refiners led by Pratt and Rogers of the Charles Pratt and Company refining interests of Brooklyn, New York, which comes close to physical warfare, including boycotts and vandalism, in western Pennsylvania in March 1872 (and comes to be known as the "Oil War"), the railroads soon agree to back down.

Pennsylvania revokes the cartel’s charter and equal rates are restored for the time being.

Although Rockefeller will become the target of many who decry Standard Oil's ruthlessness in subsequent years, the South Improvement rebate scheme had been Flagler's idea.

Undeterred, though vilified for the first time by the press, Rockefeller continues with his self-reinforcing cycle of buying competing refiners, improving the efficiency of his operations, pressing for discounts on oil shipments, undercutting his competition, making secret deals, raising investment pools, and buying rivals out.

Even Charles Pratt and Henry H. Rogers, Rockefellers’ former antagonists, eventually see the futility of continuing to compete against Standard Oil: in 1874, they make a secret agreement with their old nemesis to be acquired.

Pratt and Rogers become Rockefeller's partners.

Rogers, in particular, becomes one of Rockefeller's key men in the formation of the Standard Oil Trust.

Pratt's son, Charles Millard Pratt, will eventually become Secretary of Standard Oil.

For many of his competitors, Rockefeller has merely to show them his books so they can see what they are up against, then make them a decent offer.

If they refuse his offer, he tells them he will run them into bankruptcy, then cheaply buy up their assets at auction.

He sees himself as the industry’s savior, "an angel of mercy", absorbing the weak and making the industry as a whole stronger, more efficient, and more competitive.

Cornelius Vanderbilt’s New York Central Railroad controls the lucrative New York City-to-Chicago route by 1875.

Cornelius Vanderbilt’s fortune stands at an estimated one hundred million dollars, most of which he leaves to his thirteen children at his death in early January 1877.

With increased railroad traffic over the Niagara River, Leffert Buck replaces John Roebling's wood and stone bridge  in 1886 with the predominantly steel bridge that still carries trains over the river today.

After the American Civil War, the New York Central railroad had publicized Niagara Falls as a focus of pleasure and honeymoon visits.

The Niagara appropriations bill had been signed into law in 1885, creating the Niagara Reservation, the oldest state park in the United States.

The park has the American Falls, the Bridal Veil Falls, and part of the Canadian Falls.

New York State Assemblyman Thomas Vincent Welch had figured prominently in getting the bill signed, and will serve as the first Superintendent of the Niagara Falls State Park from its inception until 1903, eighteen years.