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Here’s the post I did the day my season on the Urger ended. The boat seriously needs a reboot now, a rewind, since it will NOT been operating season of 2017. None of the photos here have been posted before, and there’s a surprise at the end of this post, stemming from a conversation last night I am grateful for. Here’s Urger approaches the guard gate at the top of E-6 on the last day of the 2014 season.
Here the morning of that last run, she’s docked above E-11. May she not grow into the bank the way that fence has been consumed by the tree.
The entire four-person crew fits into this shot at E-14.
As the sun clears the horizon, Urger‘s out and running east, here under the onramp to the Thruway below E-17.
A few seconds earlier, she exited E-17. Note the 17 at the top of the lock frame.
Bathed in the warm October sunrise, Urger waits for the guillotine door to raise before exiting the chamber.
Here’s the boat on the wall in Little Falls in midsummer 2014.
A month or so back while it was still winter, I returned to E-17, and there was ice on the wall and in the chamber, and I put my camera away quickly so that my hands could return to the pockets where I’d stuffed chemical heat packs.
This would have been the 25th season for the 1901-built Urger as an ambassador/educational vessel. This role for her was created –as I understand it– through a private/public partnership fronted by Schuyler Meyer. Here’s some more of the story of the boat and the program, which was initially operated by SCOW, State Council on Waterways, which appears to have had its last event in 2009.
At the start of this post, I mentioned a surprise. Last night (finally) I uploaded to YouTube here a half dozen short recordings I made of of Urger underway, with closeups of her Atlas-Imperial engine. Crank up the sound and enjoy them. Please share widely. The program and the boat are too precious to be permanently lost. Here is a post I did when Urger last visited NYC’s sixth boro.
All photos and opinion entirely by Will Van Dorp. Thanks, MB, for the conversation.
To clarify this title, the first post in the series has a lead photo showing a map of our journey broken into legs marked by pins. Legs 4 through 6 took us from Waterford, shown below, to Oswego.
Urger stood by all spiffed up for the steamboat festival.
Erie Canal Cruises accommodated sightseers eastbound toward lock E18.
Tender 4, the electric motor vessel, assisted in a dredge project.
Tug Erie tied up at the end of the work day.
Here’s the cutterhead of one dredge.
Lucy H returned light past Rome, NY.
Never have I seen so
many bald eagles. This one is banded.
And leg 6 ended in Oswego.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who will post again when able.
It’s been a few years since Lehigh Valley 79 was there, but David Sharps added a new feature to the parade–a
brassy salute
to each vessel that passed for review.
And what a potpourri of vessels that was!
Folks who from Monday to Friday work on precision instruments indoors . . . on weekends go to the physics lab on the river and experiment with vectors.
Others compete shoreside commanding line to fly.
If you missed this one, make plans now for 2016.
Lehigh Valley #79 was last at the Roundup in 2010. See it here and here.
All photos here by Will Van Dorp.
Click here for posts from lots of other years. In today’s post, you’ll see almost all blue-and-gold before the parade, i.e., heading for the muster
entering the top of lock 2
It was great to have two covered barges for events.
Lehigh Valley 79, dry dock repairs complete, heads for the sixth boro this week.
Urger exits the low side of lock 2 and . . .
enters the Hudson.
Note the Waterford wall with the covered barges in the distance.
The federal lock at Troy leads into the rest of the Hudson . . .
After the dignitaries are picked up,
the flotilla heads back north into the Troy lock,
and
the parade has begun.
All photos by Will Van Dorp. Many thanks to tug44 as host and photo boat.
For more photos, check these from the Daily Gazette.
You can find my previous “golden” posts here. From the first photo below until the seventh and last one, only twelve minutes pass. The setting is lock 17 in Little Falls, NY, where the lift/descent is 40.5 feet. .
Click here and here for some interesting historical pics.
Let’s start with 0703 hr on October 27 last.
Six minutes later . . . the chamber has drained and the sun has emerged from the clouds.
The door starts to raise as the counterweight descends . . . and against the south wall, it’s Urger . . . behind a wall of drips . . .
At 0715 . . . the captain has rung the forward bell and
now squints, looking into the sun for navigational aids on the way east to Amsterdam, about six hours away.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who has postponed dealing with more unfinished business until tomorrow.
The transformation from Erie Canal to Barge Canal involved incorporating more rivers and lakes into the canal system. Enjoy these river and lake photos, like the one below . . . Oswego river, northbound, June 2014. All photos were taken in 2014.
Mohawk River eastbound also in June.
Oneida Lake crossing eastbound, August.
Mohawk River eastbound in August.
Oneida Lake eastbound in late October. Now contrast these photos with
land cut near Waterford in October and
near Rochester about a week earlier.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
In a previous post, I mentioned I was very subjectively dividing the canal into zones from west to east, and I continue that here, and this post is the most personal. Place a compass needle in the place I did kindergarten through grade 12, and make a circle around it with a radius of about 2o miles. All these photos were taken inside that circle. Although I did move away from there almost 50 years ago, I’m still surprised how little I recognize. Of course, the water perspective here is one I never had as a kid. Start here, I’ve driven on that road . . . Route 31 between Macedon and Palmyra a hundred plus times, but I did feel like an amnesiac seeing it this way.
Leaving lock 29, there were a lot of folks, but I didn’t know them.
This is the beginning of the “spillway” I needed to cross when I walked to first grade. The bridge–much like the one in the distance–had an open grate deck, which terrified me the first few days.
I was happy that a friend waved from the Galloway Bridge on the westward trip and another on the eastward trip.
Route 31, travelled many times, lies just a hundred feet of so off the right side of the photo.
Port Gibson, population less than 500 in 2010. New York state must have a few dozen towns, cities, hamlets, and/or villages with “port” in the name.
I know this farm on a drumlin well in Newark, NY. Although the population less than 10,000, Newark is what I considered a big town.
Beyond those trees to the right is a principal street in Newark.
This is the port of Newark.
Just outside Lyons, NY, population under 4000 and shrinking, awaits Grouper, subject of many posts including this recent one.
Inside the village of Lyons . . . a mural on a wall that borders the location of the previous iterations of the canal depicts what might once have been here.
Outside of town, these “wide ditches” are the actual “enlarged canal” of the 19th century.
And ruins like these . . . I never knew existed even though I knew the place name “Lock Berlin.”
Why did I never know the railroad through my world then crossed in places like this . . .?
I’d seen these grain bins from the road but never imagined the canal lay right behind–or “in front of” –them
Quoth the eagle . . . you can’t go home again if you never really knew your home to begin with.
Al photos by Will Van Dorp. Many thanks to Bob Stopper who showed me what I should have seen a half century ago.
I’m moving eastward from yesterday’s post with my very subjective dividing of the NYS Canal system into zones. Very subjective, we then move into New York State’s third largest city–Rochester, which also happens to be what I learned about as “the city” as a boy. If someone worked “in the city,” that meant Rochester. In the photo below, technically in Greece, you can see the junction lock, the gates leading to a lock on the original and possibly the enlarged canal. Those iterations of the Erie Canal went straight here, the Barge Canal (the early 20th century iteration) forked off to the right, bypassing the city of Rochester.
I hadn’t considered what “bypassing Rochester” would look like, and my zones 1 and 2 were portions of the canal I’d never seen from the water. What it looks like is lots of bridges, with signs to places I knew but otherwise no traces, no familiar skyline.
Approach lighting system for the airport I took my first flight from,
but otherwise bridges, some beautiful . . .
some footbridges . . .
and others very serviceable vehicle and waterway structure . . .
with some people in view
as well as some current commercial buildings
and bridges some complete . . .
and trafficked
Certainly there are vestiges of industrial marine usage
not used in decades.
The creation of a kayak park and boat house is one of many transformations that make recreation the current Erie Canal’s industry.
Another transformation . . . silos into new uses. The tour boat in the foreground is Sam Patch, named for Sam Patch, of course.
I have a personal connection with the Pittsford canal front: as a boy, I harvested pickles for a neighbor, and one Saturday night I got to ride the farm truck to the piccalilli plant, right near the Schoen complex. If only time travel were possible and I could take that truck ride to the pickle factory again . . .
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
I’m back along the sixth boro but sorting through all my photos puts my head back up along the canal corridor, and I decided to divide the waterway into zones, subjective ones suggested by memory and photos. Also, whim tells me to do them in the order that comes easiest. So I’ll start with the longest level . . . about 50 miles between Greece and Spencerport all the way to Gasport. . . WITHOUT a single lock!
Allow a snarky comment first on the bridges . . . more than a dozen of them in this stretch. Some signage calls them draw bridges and others . . . lift bridges. For the record, I’d call some lift bridges. . .
and these . . . a fixed bridges.
The tow path is a heavily trafficked bike path. Click here for some disused lingo once apparently spoken in these parts.
There are lots of birds, but this is unique.
If you think this a chicken farm, look again more closely.
The road along the north side of the canal here is lower than the level of water, as are the cabbage field and apple orchard.
Between Albion and Medina there’s the quite unique and quite old Culvert Road.
Early fall . . . and the trees are heavy,
the grain combined and stored in bins.
In Medina, one of my favorite places in this portion of the canal, this dam allows the canal to be navigable
some 70 feet above Oak Orchard Creek.
Historical signs point out a non-scandal involving a former politician and
connection between this mostly farming area and . . . say .. . Brooklyn Bridge.
OK . . . Gasport. Next stop Lockport.
All photos taken in October by Will Van Dorp. If you have photos to share from when this portion of the canal saw commercial traffic, please get in touch. As it was last month, vessels drawing eight feet or more sometimes struggle with the bottom.
Remind me some day to tell the story of Schuyler Meyer, who is credited with starting Urger’s educational program back before 1990. As of today, the season is over. Over 4500 NYS fourth graders have experienced the “Urger program” this season. That number and more have visited the 113-year-old vessel in festivals and other contexts along the Canal, now recognized as a very large location on the National Register of Historical Places.
Thanks to Chris Kenyon of Wayne County Tourism for the first and last photo here. All other photos were taken by Will Van Dorp.
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