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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.
Being responsible for our wake, we slow down when we see folks fishing or just small boating. But when you can’t see folks . . .
All photos by Will Van Dorp . . . along the Canal in central NYS.
Everyone has a white whale, something to obsess about. On the canal, that might be a bridge, famous enough for its low bridges since 1825 that songs have been spawned. One person’s white whale might be the abandoned rail bridge known as E-93 . . about 16 feet. We made it although the radio antenna sprang twice. I wonder why it’s not removed and recycled.
The stern reads “Syracuse of Syracuse.” She’s built in Syracuse. Two boats passing during the day, albeit a rainy one, is still a beautiful thing.
Photos were taken by Will Van Dorp between Palmyra and Newark.
Will Van Dorp took the above photos between Pittsford and Medina.
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