By the 1890s, the railroads were acquiring an increasingly large share of grain shipments. Tolls were eliminated on the Erie Canal in 1883 in an effort to regain some of the grain trade (and the State Barge Canal was built in 1905 to 1918, superseding the Erie Canal, in a last ditch effort). In 1898, 30.4 percent of all grain moving east from Chicago went via the Great Lakes and Buffalo; by 1913 had dropped to 9.4 percent. In 1898, 221 millions bushels were stored here and 108 million bushels passed through the port; in 1913, the elevator held 160 million bushels and lake shipments had dropped to 32 million bushels.

The opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 was the final dagger -- Buffalo had lost its importance as a grain transshipment point. For the first time since the opening of the Erie Canal, geography had taken Buffalo off the beaten path. .

The new route, which opened a direct link from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic for ocean-going ships, put Buffalo at a dead end. Buffalo has a small eastward hinterland which doesn't produce grain, and it is cheaper to transport by rail to east coast ports from here. Anything originating to the west went right on anocean-going ship

After the Seaway opened, grain shipments at Buffalo dropped 45 percent below the average of the previous 25 years. In 1959, Buffalo received 73,263,509 bushels of grain, an amount far below the earlier average of 135 million. The last time grain was shipped in large quantities to Buffalo from the interior of the Great Lakes for storage and eventual re-sale was in the 1960s. (All grain coming into Buffalo today is associated with milling, rather than transshipment.)