Tag: Port of Buffalo

Buffalo in the ’80s: Candidate Ronald Reagan visits Buffalo waterfront

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

In 1980, as former California Gov. Ronald Reagan was challenging President Jimmy Carter for the White House, the Reagan campaign made a stop in Buffalo.

Buffalo News archives

The future president had breakfast with longshoremen and visited the docks and Port of Buffalo before heading to Erie, Pennsylvania, later that day.

Reagan visited Buffalo four times in the run-up to the 1980 presidential campaign: once in 1977, once in 1979, and twice in 1980. This photo was taken on his last visit before the Sept. 11, 1980, election.

As president, four years and one day after this photo was taken, Reagan visited Buffalo to help dedicate the Santa Maria Apartments on Buffalo’s West Side.

 

Buffalo in the 80s: Some WNYers still expecting the shipping industry to return

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Thirty-five years ago this month, The News began celebrating the 100th anniversary of the paper’s starting a daily edition.

In the special section called One Hundred Years of Finance and Commerce, The News recounted the history of a handful of Buffalo’s financial and commercial industries and provided ad space for many companies involved in those industries to tout their own contributions.

By 1980, the port of Buffalo was obviously and irrevocably in decline, along with the grain, steel and lumber industries that the port once supported.

While the port was gasping, it was still alive — and this piece looks at would it would have taken to breathe new life into Buffalo’s lakes freight industry.