The Erie Canal in the Capital District

The talented, the amazing, the fantastic….are there any other adjectives the groupies of historian Michael Barrett would like to use? Regardless of praise preference, his lecture on December 12^th at the Van Schaick Island Country Club was fantastic. His topic – The Erie Canal in the Capital District: 200 Years of the Empire State's Flat-water Roadway – covered a lot of history for the local area.

Familiar names to the area were
 important figures to the canal's beginning

Starting with taking a look at the geography of New York and the local flat-water areas, Michael explored the early reasoning for why a canal was such a highly desired goal – as well as the obstacles facing such an endeavor. The efforts by the Western Inland Lock Company and the Northern Inland Lock Company and the financial struggles impacted the route of the canal and how it was built. Who knew that the Erie Canal could’ve been the Ontario Canal if earlier plans had the funds to build?

There were of course, doubters of the project too. It’s partly why the Erie Canal was a state- funded rather than federally-funded endeavor. Thomas Jefferson died still believing that the country was accomplishing the impossible with the construction. But that gamble, a move that the term “Clinton’s ditch” springs from, seriously paid off as many of the photos that Michael showed us proved. In just a few years time since its initial opening, New York paid off the monumental figure of $7 million at the time of its construction 1817-1825.

The original route of the Erie was 363 miles of continuous canal, making it the largest canal in the world thanks to the efforts of the amateur engineers that worked on creating this marvel (hint: one of them was the brother of the museum building's original owner). The lack of professional engineers makes aqueduct bridges like the Crescent and the Rexford Aqueduct even more impressive (and says something about trust, huh?). 

Some of the local highlights of the original Erie Canal, included the Troy Sidecut locks, which were frequently used to help shave some time on the canal when travelling this portion of the route to or from Albany. Congestion could make the four-mile-an-hour speed limit seem even slower on the canal and an option like the locks in Troy became popular quickly.

There was also the option of traveling onto the Erie Canal through a juncta - like the one created at the meetup of the Mohawk River and Champlain Canal at Waterford/Cohoes. 

A painter's interpretation of the area to demonstrate
the locks on the Erie Canal - but there's a good reason
you probably can't place the location of this spot. This
circled hill isn't in the spot the artist decided needed a little
more flair...so, for the purposes of aestheticism, there is a
misplaced hill in this painting

The canal cut through towns and there was a lot of development in what was otherwise urban areas of the state. There was an enlargement of the canal in 1835 to accommodate the high usage of the waterway - there was so much flow of goods, the canal enabled the western parts of the state and the country to act for a while as the granary of Europe. 

Of course, he couldn't leave out the familiar "Low Bridge" history - there were over 300 bridges that crisscrossed the canal and, for the state to save some money, they weren't exactly...tall enough to actually sit up on the deck of a boat to pass underneath. 

Other ways to end up in the canal were the result of another aspect of travel on the canal. West Troy - now Watervliet and Maplewood - was a hot spot for the workers on these boats to spend their newly received paycheck (it could take 7-9 days to travel the canal one end to the other and payment was typically after a full trip) in one of the dozen saloons there. Not so surprising that fighting occurred and going fishing in the canal often pulled out an unlucky canaller.

The several enlargements on the canal meant that the original
route was altered and the juncta also had a new spot 

After the boom from the commerce on the canal, competition came in the form of trains by the 1840s. But that doesn't mean that the canal lay dormant - it continued to operate as a viable commercial enterprise until around the construction of the Barge Canal (now called the New York State Canal System) in 1905-1918.

Not the weighlock building area, but there
was a lock in this area - can you tell? Like
many other places, the canal was filled in
and covered over to be built on. The rocks
had retained more heat than the ground and
the light dusting of snow helped to really
show off where exactly the old canal was!

Today there are still remnants of the original structure that you can check out - Maplewood's old weigh lock building foundation is now a park that you can check out and there are spots in Cohoes too as well as the old sidecut locks in Waterford at Lock 2 that act as a spillway for the NYS Canal System. 

So when it's not frozen outside, go explore!. But take Michael's advice though and watch out for poison oak and ivy if you're searching for the elusive ruins of the Lansingburgh canal.

Never heard of it before? Better check out the Hudson Mohawk Industrial Gateway to learn more!

Thanks so much Michael Barrett for another great lecture