Navigating On The Erie Canal

I’ve got an old mule and her name is Sal,

Fifteen years on the Erie Canal,

She’s a good old worker and a good old pal,

Fifteen years on the Erie Canal.

I still remember that song from elementary school. That’s how I first learned of the Erie Canal and I thought maybe someday I’d go and see it

Years go by and I developed a love for history and boating. Visiting relatives gave me an affection for upstate New York. A trifecta that spells Erie Canal.

Fortunately, Gladys was also very interested and we starting seriously thinking about boating the Erie Canal. Over the last couple years, we did some research and drives through New York towns like Lockport and Medina. We contacted the New York Barge Commission, obtained maps and charts, got the 10-day permit, and decided summer 2016 was it.

We’ve hauled some barges in our day.

Filled with lumber, coal and hay,

And every inch of the way we know,

From Albany to Buffalo.

We towed our 24-foot Sea Ray to Amherst, NY, just northeast of Buffalo, on the Erie Canal. This is about 7 miles from the west end of the Canal at the Niagara River. We put in at Amherst Marine Center, owned by brothers Jack and Bill McDonald. Jack was great to line things up and Bill was on hand when we got there. What the heck, he lives summers there on a 40 some foot Carver.

Better people you could not want to meet and have help you going to a new destination. Bill, and another docker, Bart, who stays on his 40+ Silverton, gave us so much Erie Canal information that our heads were going to explode.  We overnighted there, getting ready to start the trip the next morning.

Low bridge, everybody down,

Low bridge, for we’re coming to a town,

And you’ll always know your neighbor,

And you’ll always know your pal.

If you’ve every navigated on the Erie Canal.

Going east from Amherst, we arrived in Lockport. Locks 35 and 34 dropped us 25 feet each. It’s a great old historical town where we’ve spent time in the past. This time we just locked through. The lockmaster checked and dated our permit and told us he’d let the lift bridge operators ahead know we were coming.

New York really does it right. From then on, when we approached a lock or lift bridge, the lockmaster or operator would respond to our boat by name, tell us he or she saw us coming and would get us in the lock or lift the bridge.

The lift bridges on the Erie Canal are great old steel structures, nearly identical and over 100 years old. They’ve been rebuilt and are in very good shape.  When down, they are about 6 feet +/- above the water. The operators are great. Some tend two bridges and drive ahead to open the next. We were held up for about 5-10 minutes waiting for the operator to come from another bridge where he had just lifted for other boats. We got three apologies. These people are really good. 

We also passed though guard gates all along the canal. These are large steel doors that open and close to control the water flow in the Canal.

We arrived at Albion to stop for the first night. Birthplace of George Pullman, who supposedly got his idea for the railroad sleeping car from watching people on the Canal. It’s a beautiful old town, first built when the Canal came through in the 1820s.

Downtown Albion is full of wonderful old buildings and magnificent churches built of the red Medina Sandstone quarried nearby. The 1874 Presbyterian church has a red sandstone steeple 175 feet tall! It is the Oleans County seat and has a great old courthouse to match.

Sadly, the historic downtown area is like a ghost town as the businesses have been lost to an area a half mile from the original downtown. It is a typical sprawl; lookalike, mass produced box stores, fast food chain restaurants, and hot paved parking areas that are inconvenient to canal travelers. 

We stopped in the hardware store downtown for a water hose. A hardware store has been in this location since the 1840s and the current owner has been there 30+ years. Wal-Mart opened outside town a couple years ago. Since then, he’s laid off his employees and doesn’t know if he’ll make it through the winter. Haven’t we all heard similar stories before?

Next stop was Brockport. What a pleasure to see. A bustling old school downtown with restaurants, taverns, and stores adjacent to the canal. Even an operating movie theater, the Strand, with a marquis similar to our old Detroit Theater. No McDonald’s here, thankfully. Brockport was a great refresher after poor Albion.

Next stop was Spencerport. A nice town with a welcome center and museum right on the canal with a mixture of buildings from the 1800s, 1900s and now.  We hung out with boaters Mike and Sue from Geneva NY and Don and Cathy from Tonawanda NY. They are experienced canal travelers with very nice, larger boats. It was like us in a pop-up camper and them in RVs. We had a good time with them. Don, Cathy and Mike are all retired teachers.

The Erie Canal was built at a cost of just over $7million and repaid its debt in 10 years. It was widened in the early 1860s and again in the late 1910s.  Originally it had 83 locks, now 35, that take the canal through 570 feet of elevation. Railroads severely cut into traffic in the late 1800s, but the canal survived and actually had its peak tonnage in the 1950s.

Today’s canal is far wider and does not necessarily follow the footprint of the original canal. There are places where the 1825 and 1860s canal beds are separate and visible form the current 1910s canal.

The opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway and completion of the New York Thruway took all the traffic except oil. A pipeline opened in the early 1970s finished the job. There is no commercial traffic now, other than tourism. As we went through vast corn fields and apple orchards, we saw that the canal is a large source of irrigation water.

Leaving Spencerport, we went through a 5 mile cut through hills with stone walls as high as 40 feet on each side of the canal. As we left the cut, we crossed the Genesee River, flowing north to Rochester. A dam in Rochester holds back the river water to maintain the Erie Canal’s depth. The river then flows to Lake Ontario but, due to the dam, you cannot boat from the Erie Canal to Lake Ontario via the Genesee River. The story we were told was that back when the canal was being built, the folks in Rochester did not want to be bothered with the fuss of locks in the center of town.

After going through Locks 33 and 32, the next stop was Pittsford. Nice, trendy, crafty, kinda plastic, and expensive. Nice transient docks. Had lunch and moved on.

Fairport was the next stop. A neat town with more history. In 1883, The R.T. French Company opened a spice mill. It was destroyed by fire in 1885 and the company moved to Rochester. In 1886, De Land & Company built a plant to make Baking Powder. Many of those building still stand and house other businesses.

Passing through Locks 30 and 29, we arrived at Palmyra, but not before the lockmaster at 29 gave the boaters from Ohio some business about Steph Curry and Michigan State.

Palmyra is another great old town with plenty of brick Victorian buildings. One house, built in 1827, was a station on the Underground Railroad. The Presbyterian Church was built in 1832, Village Hall in 1867, and the Baptist Church in 1870.

A 150-foot structural steel flagpole donated during the 1892 Cleveland-Harrison Presidential election still flies Old Glory. Henry Wells, the co-founder of Wells-Fargo, did foot-delivery here. Winston Churchill’s grandparents lived in and were married in Palmyra.

A friendly Palmyra Police officer told us where to get the best pizza in town.  We had breakfast with locals in a place called Muddy Water Cafe, a one-woman, smaller version of the Root. After a quick stop at Newark, we went through Locks 28B and then 28A at Lyons. Then through Lock 28, past the Village of Clyde and through Lock 26. 

At green channel marker 547, we turned right (southerly), leaving the Erie Canal and entering the Cayuga-Seneca Canal. The Erie Canal continues eastward to Albany and the Hudson River.

On the C-S Canal. we went through Lock 1 and again turned right at red channel marker 54 and into the Seneca River. 

Just outside downtown Seneca Falls, we locked up a total of 50 feet through Locks 2 & 3, which is also at the dam that created their reservoir. This is the same height we locked down at Lockport. All the other locks along the way were about 6-12 feet. We had travelled about 110 canal miles, mostly with a 10 mph speed limit and 5 mph no wake zones.

We tied up for the night at the Seneca Falls boater facility. Seneca Falls is the town that was modeled after Bedford Falls in the Jimmy Stewart movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” An old and vibrant downtown adjacent to the river. You gotta love a town with its police station in the old train station. We didn’t see Ward Bond (movie trivia).

The next night was at Seneca Lake State Park. Our plan to cruise down the lake a little was fouled by a small craft warning. Yes, they have SCWs on Seneca Lake. 15-20 south winds eased the 90-degree heat, but created good sized waves with white caps. So we got our rental car and drove along the west shore, which is New York wine country, and had a great dinner at a local restaurant.

Next day, we drove back to Amherst, got the truck and trailer, and doubled back to Seneca. We loaded the boat on the trailer and headed home.

Edward Favre

Member, Lakewood Board of Education

Retired Sergeant Lakewood Police

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Volume 12, Issue 18, Posted 4:10 PM, 08.30.2016