At present [1925] an electric trolley line carries passengers from this station into the Village of Northport. [The trolley is long gone, but its track is still a feature of Northport's Main Street--Ed.] St. Johnland, the next station, started as an Episcopalian charitable settlement. It is now known as Kings Park. The line then passes through Smithtown, St. James, Stony Brook and Setauket, finally arriving at Port Jefferson. Flowerfield is a recent station, where is located one of the nurseries of the late John Lewis Childs.
     The line was extended through to Wading River, a distance of ten miles, in 1895, by the Long Island Railroad Company North Shore Branch, which immediately merged the Smithtown & Port Jefferson Railroad. The Long Island Railroad North Shore Branch has been recently merged with the Long Island Railroad Company.
     In 1865 the Long Island Railroad built a branch from Mineola to Locust Valley, known for many years as the Locust Valley Branch. The right-of-way from Mineola to Glen Cove was obtained very cheaply by Stephen Taber, then a director of the company.
     The entire right-of-way to Glen Cove was obtained without the necessity of instituting condemnation proceedings or appealing to the courts. In 1889 the Oyster Bay Extension Railroad, organized in 1886, continued the line to the Village of Oyster Bay, the present terminus of the line, and after which the branch has been named. The extension was immediately merged with the Long Island Railroad.
     Oliver Charlick, the successful organizer and builder of the Eighth Avenue Railway line in New York City, became President of the Long Island Railroad in 1863. When it was rumored that he was about to buy the road, the owners did everything in their power to hamper him, by allowing the road to fall into disrepair and by encumbering it with leases and agreements. When he took hold of the road it was in a dilapidated and dangerous condition. He immediately undertook its improvement. All the additions and improvements that were made between 1863 and 1875 were due solely to his efforts. In 1875 he was forced out by the Havemeyer interests.

     The Hicksville & Cold Spring Branch Railroad was built from Hicksville to Syosset in 1854. It was leased to the Long Island Railroad, and sold to it in 1863. Syosset was at this time an important terminal, and people came from Huntington and Northport in their carriages down to Syosset to take the trains. A few wealthy members of the Jones family of Cold Spring Village, undertook the enterprise of grading the road to their village, which they did in 1862. This road enters Cold Spring along the west side of the stream and mill ponds. But after the line had been graded a dispute arose between the members of the Jones family and the Long Island Railroad as to the exact location of the terminal. As the parties could not agree, the railroad finally abandoned the idea altogether, and when the road was finally extended to Northport the route was a more inland one, leaving Cold Spring to the north.
     In 1867 a right-of-way and depot site in Huntington had been granted by the town to the Long Island Railroad, but Oliver Charlick got into a dispute with certain landholders, and with characteristic obstinacy, refused to yield. The road fell through, the more liberal terms of Northport being accepted. The Long Island Railroad extended the branch to Northport Village, leaving Huntington Village to the north, in April, 1868. For quite a few years there was no station opposite Cold Spring, the passengers from that village being obliged to go to either Syosset or Huntington. This aroused the antagonism of the villagers to a great extent. Soon after, however, a station called "Cold Spring Harbor" was established at the small settlement of Woodbury.
     The Long Island Railroad stimulated the building of a further extension by a subsidiary company, the Smithtown & Port Jefferson Railroad Company, in 1870. This extension left the old line at Northport junction, on the highlands back of Northport Village, and continued to Port Jefferson. The first station, known as East Northport, soon became known merely as Northport Station, the line into the village from Northport junction being abandoned.

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