In 1826, the Mohwak & Hudson Railroad was founded to construct a rail line between Schenectady and Albany as a faster alternative to compete with the Erie Canal. For the route to be opened in 1831, a locomotive was manufactured at the West Point Foundry, which should take over the operation with passenger cars converted from horse carriages. As an affront to Governor DeWitt Clinton, who was always on the side of the canal, the locomotive was named after him.

In contrast to the Grasshoppers built at the same time, the “DeWitt Clinton” already had a horizontal boiler barrel, a steam dome and a smokebox with a chimney at the front end of the boiler. It also already had an attached tender for storing supplies.

With the coal from the Lackawanna area originally used in the first test runs, no sufficient range could be achieved, and so the coal was soon replaced by coke. Using the new fuel, the 16-mile distance was covered at an average of between 25 and 27 mph. Up to 18 passengers could be transported in each of the three cars.

The original locomotive was scrapped after only two years of service and replaced with newer models. Nevertheless, it laid the foundation for the fact that the canal lost importance from the 1860s. In 1893, the New York Central as the successor to the Mohawk & Hudson made a working replica, which was shown at the Chicago World's Fair that same year. It was in regular service into the 1950s and has since been in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.