The Erie Canal is famous in song and story. Proposed in 1808 and completed in 1825, the canal links Lake Erie in the west to the Hudson River in the east. In its original form, the canal included 18 aqueducts to carry the canal over ravines and rivers, and 83 locks, with a rise of 568 feet from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. It was 4 feet deep and 40 feet wide, and floated boats carrying 30 tons of freight. A ten foot wide towpath was built along the bank of the canal for horses, mules, and oxen led by a boy boat driver or "hoggee".
In order to keep pace with the growing demands of traffic, the Erie Canal was enlarged between 1836 and 1862. The "Enlarged Erie" was 70 feet wide and 7 feet deep, and could handle boats carrying 240 tons. The number of locks was reduced to 72. Most of the remaining traces of the Old Erie Canal are from the Enlarged Erie era. In 1903, the State again decided to enlarge the canal by the construction of what was termed the "Barge Canal", consisting of the Erie Canal and the three chief branches of the State system -- the Champlain, the Oswego, and the Cayuga and Seneca Canals. The resulting canal was completed in 1918, and is 12 to 14 feet deep, 120 to 200 feet wide, and 363 miles long, from Albany to Buffalo. 57 locks were built to handle barges carrying up to 3,000 tons of cargo, with lifts of 6 to 40 feet. This is the Erie Canal which today is utilized largely by recreational boats rather than cargo-carrying barges.
Waterford, NY
We are presently at the Waterford Visitors Center Dock. It's free for two days while we await a package in the mail. It was supposed to be here yesterday. I am certain now that when the USPS tells you it will take 2-3 days for a package to arrive, plan on more than that. Well, if you are going to be stuck waiting, you might as well be stuck here. This is a great place.
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| This is the Troy Lock. On the other side of this lock and dam, lies the intersection of the Hudson, Erie, and Champlain. |
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| Some locking companions. I believe they are young Canadian Geese. |
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| Where the boats are tied up is the Waterford Welcome Center Dock. In the background you can see the doors to what is called Lock 2. Technically speaking, Lock 1 is the Troy Lock, but because it is operated by the USACOE and not the NY Canal System, Troy Lock is not considered part of the Erie Canal. Lock 2, however, is the first of 5 in the Waterford Flight that is going to lift us some 166 feet. |
The Town of Waterford is situated in Saratoga County, 12 miles north of Albany at the junction of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers, and the junction of the Erie and Champlain Canals. In 1816 the old precinct of Halve Maan” (Halfmoon) was divided into two separate towns, Halfmoon and Waterford. The Village of Waterford is located within the town and holds the distinction of being the oldest continually incorporated village in the United States. Waterford is the home of the “Waterford Flight”, the highest set of lift locks in the world. We'll be climbing those locks hopefully later today.
In the meantime, we have been keeping ourselves busy doing a little of this and a little of that. The evening we arrived, we headed off to town to do some grocery shopping and ended up in this local pub called the Angry Penguin. Funny place. We encountered some really interesting and fun folks there. It was fun. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. Actually, I wish I had; they had Arrogant Bastard Ale on tap! Yep. 'Twas a long night. We are no longer finding Tiki Bars. However, upstate New York has an over-abundance of Irish Pubs. In fact, having travelled some in Ireland, you could easily mistake the environs up here for those in many places along the rivers in Ireland. There is a large Irish presence here. The ubiquitous Irish are a lot of fun.
The next day, we took a long hike on the Old Champlain Canal System Trail. The hike follows the canal towpath from the Visitors Center to Lock 5. It is around 2 miles each way. The hike takes you through Button Park where the Button Steam Fire Engine Factory used to be in the early to mid 1800's. You walk past where the Line Barns used to be - where they sheltered, rested, and fed the mules that pulled the barges in the canals. You go by old parts of the canal no longer used, or which are now used only as spillways. In 1904, the allowable depth of this canal was 4 1/2 feet. If barges drew more than this, they had to unload at the weigh station. The "Gauger" as he was called, used a stick with a piece of iron at right angles to determine the depth of the boat. As the story goes, this agent did quite well for himself selling off the off loaded cargo. The trail concludes at the Waterford Historical Museum. We met the curator and he gave us a private tour of the museum exhbits which include a great amount of information on the three groups of folks who settled in this area, the Irish, the Italians, and the French Canadians. There is also a working model of the locks the curator uses to demonstrate just how these locks work.
On the way back, we got to see the real locks in action - Lock 2, that is, of the Waterford Flight. This lock lifts boats approximately 36 feet. It's hard to get a sense of how much this is until you see a 40 foot canal boat being lifted and realize just how little the boat is compared to the size of the empty lock.
WATERFORD TO AMSTERDAM (LOCKS 2-11):
Back to the canal, however. The Erie Canal today is way different from the time it was "finished. Today, the canal maintains a minimum depth of 12 feet all the way from Troy to Buffalo, crosses 35 locks, rises from sea level at Troy to 565 feet above sea level at the Niagara River, and is crossed by over 200 highway and railroad bridges.
One could easily spend an entire summer exploring all the canal has to offer. Unfortunately, we do not have that luxury this time as we are working on completing a loop. However, from what we have seen so far, this is a great place to come boating.
We left Waterford on Friday. Yes, I know it's bad luck to leave on a Friday, but I made sure the spirits were ok with it. Within literally feet of the Waterford Dock is Lock 2, the first of 5 in the "Waterford Flight" which takes you up and over the Hudson River escarpment. Then we followed the Mohawk River in a westerly direction.
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| The water to lift boats in the lock enters from pipes underneath the locks. Consequently, it seems like the water boils when you are being lifted. |
Most of the eastern section of the canal follows this natural waterway. We passed through some true "garden hotspots" including Schecectady (which is completely about the GE manufacturing and testing facilities there which today employ most of the folks who live there), Halfmoon Beach, Mohawk View, Niskayuna, Visher Ferry, Rexford, Scotia, and Alplaus, before we finally stopped for the night at Amsterdam, New York.
On the west side of Lock 11 is a park called Guy Park that offers a free dock wall with electricity and everything. So, we stopped at around 4:30 and settled down. We went out to dinner at a place called Russo's Grill and experienced what I believe is the best Italian food I have ever had. Unfortunately, due to the late hour in the day, the entire town, with the exception of a restaurant or two, was pretty much rolled up; yes, even on a Friday night. One lockmaster I spoke with said he, too, had visited Amsterdam as in Holland. He proclaimed the Dutch version in Europe to be much more exciting than that in upstate New York. I believe him. What nobody told us about was the trains that run through this town. From our time of arrival until fairly late at night, and then often throughout the night, trains, both freight and passenger, would slam through this town at a very high rate of speed with their horns a blaring. The tracks are like 150 feet from the boat. So to say we did not get a very quiet night's sleep would be an understatement. Oh well, for the price, who's complaining?
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| Yes, that is a VW Bug perched 85 feet in the air atop that smoke stack. Strange. |
Anyways, Friday was a long day after cruising some 35 miles and 11 locks in just about 8 hours time. All the locks are different. Not in their mechanics or how they are handled, but in their own look. Each of them engage the ubiquitous blue and yellow paint common on all metal objects owned and controlled by the NY State Canal Corporation. However, some are bigger, some are smaller. Some are more recently rehabilitated. Some are attached to a dam with a waterfall next to them. Some are surrounded only by what looks like a giant stair case, having had their bypass canals located elsewhere. They all have really filthy, slimy walls, however. I can tell you that my fender covers will be going in the garbage as soon as we get to Buffalo. Frankly, we're hoping the fenders make it. This stuff is super hard on them. Nevertheless, we will keep heading west. We NEED to be south of Chicago by mid October, and we are already pushing it.
More later.
AMSTERDAM TO CANAJOHARIE TO LITTLE FALLS
Getting off the lock wall in Amsterdam was easy. From there, we were not really sure how far we would travel, but had preliminarily though to stop in the town of Canajoharie as it was logical and would put us at or about mile marker 60, approximately 1/6 of the way through the canal. So, off we went.
Between Amsterdam and Canajoharie, there were only two locks. The rest of the time was spent just motoring along in the canal/river. I say canal/river because that is what is going on. It is river, then it is canal, and then it is river again. The distinction is evident where the waterway becomes very straight and the banks are rocks and boulders that were obviously placed. The folks who built this canal took every opportunity to preserve the natural flow of the river; to use the river whereever possible and only dig canals where they had to. This is vastly different from the canals old Distler dug when he created the Okeechobee Waterway down in central Florida. You see, he went too far with the long, straight sections, and completely destroyed the ecosystems that the Caloosahatchee and the Saint Lucie Rivers supported. Apparently, when you take all the bends out of a river like that, you deplete the river's natural ability to help keep itself clean.
In any event, the landscape is changing. While our altitude above sea level is still barely 300 feet, we are now passing through the foothills and valleys of the lower Adirondack Mountains. When we see rock faces, we are seeing some of the oldest rock on the planet, over a billion years old when it was formed and ultimately exposed during the last glacial period; a time when most of New York was covered with glaciers more than a mile thick and which scowered out most of the visible valleys and hillsides. It makes sense that this is rather fertile farmland as well.
We have been seeing miles and miles of corn growing along the waterway. The Erie Canal, two main highways and throughways, and the railroads all seem to be running together in the same directions, with corn fields intersperced here and there. It's quite beautiful in this part of the world and really represents a significant "artery" of commerce. (Well, I should not here that the Erie Canal hardly has any commercial application anymore and is used almost exclusively by pleasure boaters.) I had no idea New York looked like this. There really is no comparison to anyplace I have visited in California or anywhere else, for that matter. The environs here are rather unique.
So, we stopped in Canajoharie (pronounced Can-uh-joe-harry), aka the town that Arkell built. The word "canajoharie" is an indian word that means, the pot that washes itself. It is derived from the 30 foot pot hole or sink hole that lives in a gorge a couple miles behind the town, up in the hills. We didn't get a chance to see it, but we were told that the waters rush through this hole and make a lot of noise.
I think, however, that the town's aka is probably more interesting.
Canajoharie was the home of the Beech-Nut Company. Bartlett Arkell was one of the founders of The Imperial Packing Company formed in 1891. It was a family business, smoking hams and bacon. By 1923 it had become a major food processing company and employed over 800 people. During the early years they produced grape jam, coffee, peanut butter, and even macaroni. In 1923, the company changed its name to Beech-Nut Nutrition Corporation. Bartlett Arkell managed the company. In 1931 Beech-Nut started making baby foods and had 13 varieties. Today that’s all they do and generate more than 150 different variations at the same plant built in 1910. Beech-Nut was recently purchased by a Swiss company known as Hero North America, Inc. and is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. I understand it has plans to move the company production facilities to Amsterdam, NY (same county as Canajoharie) and employ many many people.
Canajoharie is famous for other things as well. In 1783 George Washington visited Canajoharie and stayed in the VanAlstyne Homestead with his staff. The Honorable Webster Wagner lived here. Wagner is credited with inventing the railroad sleeping car, the elevated roof car, and the drawing room coach and parlor car. In 1848, Susan B. Anthony was a preceptress or lady principal and teacher in Canajoharie Academy. Limestone was quarried in Canajoharie and used to build the Brooklyn Bridge. There is a community of Amish folks living on the other side of the river. Bubble-Yum was manufactured here by Life Savers Candy, a part of Beech-Nut, back in the late sixties and seventies. Senator John F. Kennedy enjoyed Canajoharie hospitality in 1960 at the Canajoharie Hotel while on his presidential campaign tour.
We spent several hours visiting Canajoharie. Glad we did. It's a great little town and represents some of the best America has to offer. Later the same day, we threw off the lines and made a few more miles up the Erie Canal stopping just east of Lock 17.
Lock 17 is considered a "super lock" with one of the biggest lifts anywhere - more than 40 feet; certainly, it is the biggest on the Erie Canal. What also makes this lock unique, is that it is one of only two locks in North America where the giant door at the eastern side of the lock lifts straight up and boats enter under the lifted door. It sort of reminds me of a gillotine. We'll engage this lock later.
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| This photo shows ruins of old Canal Lock 35. |
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| As you can see, the old canal was not very large....or deep. The barges were a lot smaller. |
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| The gaping mouth of Lock 17 - what a monster! |
The City of Little Falls was first settled in 1725, but was not formally chartered as a city until 1811. However, its real claim to fame is its cheese. Beginning with the American Revolution, the Mohawk Valley was referred to as "the bread basket of the American army." As such, Little Falls was the port of call for shipping the grain to Albany. Later, as a partial result of the trade boom that came as a result of George Washington's interest in building an inland canal that ran right through here, Little Falls became a leader in several industries, notably, the knitting industry and the marketing of cheese. In fact, because of the extensive trade that took place here on the canal, Little Falls became recognized as the cheese capital of the United States. Adding to the luster of that notoriety is Little Fall's boast of becoming America's first Board of Trade and the first to export cheese to England. Wow.
This Erie Canal is a remarkable thing. We go just a few miles and encounter a new place that has a completely different background and is famous for a completely different thing. Will every town we encounter offer this? I don't know. But I love when I hear from people who were born and raised in New York who tell me that, they lived here most of their lives and didn't know this or that. I guess it goes to show that in every place, there is something special if you take a moment and look for it.
More later.
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