Erie Canal barges in on modern world

By Ellen Creager

In 1825, travellers navigated 83 locks. I crossed one.

They traversed nearly 400 miles. I went 7.

They saw the whole thing from mule-pulled barges. I was on the Lil’ Diamond II.

We all saw no sign of a mule named Sal, but we still got to ride on the Erie Canal.

Today, the Erie Canal is open for navigation from May 1 to November 15. You can kayak through its locks, bicycle its shores, fish or visit the small towns along its meandering route. You can even rent a canal boat and skipper it yourself for a night or a week through the locks and waterways.

The canal’s western portion near Rochester, New York, is its most traditional and lively. Its centre portion, near Rome and Syracuse, is more modern. The Mohawk Valley area is by nature quiet.

But back in the day, the whole canal was a massive, risky endeavour.

Built from 1817 to 1825 by labourers hand-digging a 4-foot-deep ditch across the only low east-west spot between Georgia and Canada, the Erie Canal was a game changer for young America. Suddenly, the civilised east was connected with the wilds of Michigan and beyond. Goods were moved. Businesstrade flourished. Migration expanded.

Imagine the luxury of traveling from Albany to Buffalo in just five days on a comfortable barge instead of two weeks by stagecoach!

I thought of those thrilled passengers as I boarded Lil’ Diamond II at the Erie Canal Cruises port in Herkimer.

On the mild, overcast day, the boat of about 30 mellow tourists, many Amish, chugged eastward down the placid Mohawk River, which has been part of the Erie Canal system since the early 1900s. We passed under a huge green flood gate and I-90, as birds chirped and the narrator talked.

At Jacksonburg, we came to quaint Lock 18.

The boat entered. Century-old gates closed behind us. We slowly fell 20 feet as the water drained out of the lock. Then as if by magic, the water pressure pushed the wooden gates in front of us open. The boat slid out.

On the way back, Lil’ Diamond passed a sailboat going east, the Cariad — out of Grosse Pointe, Mich.

Later, I called its owner, Garrett Myers of Grosse Pointe Woods. Where was he going?

“Stonington, Conn.,” said Myers, who is originally from upstate New York. “It was my first time on the Erie Canal. It was a really big adventure.”

He and his crew spent 11 days navigating the canal, stopping many times along the way. Among his favourite stops? Clyde, New York, where the mayor came down to meet them, and Spencerport, a pretty town.

“And I learned that the Erie Canal is not a canal. Its creeks and rivers and lakes and ruins of old canals. We didn’t get bored till the very end.”

Nearly 200 years ago, the Erie Canal was the coolest thing around. Then the railroad came along, and the canal became the transportation version of dial-up Internet — way too slow. When the St. Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959, the canal’s mission was kaput.

End of story? Not quite.

“In the 1960s and '70s it wasn’t used much, then people started thinking, what about recreation? They started envisioning a future for the canal,” says Jean Mackay, spokeswoman for the Erie Canalways National Heritage Corridor.

This century, the Erie Canal and New York’s entire 500-mile canal system was designated a heritage corridor with the aim of tourism.

Now, pleasure boats and small craft still use the canal to get from the Great Lakes to the eastern seaboard. The waterways are used by tourists and anglers, cyclists and hikers. Buffalo is even renovating its old canals to make them a centrepiece tourist attraction.

“I realised that the beauty of the Canal is more in the experience of the journey,” Myers said. “No breathtaking vistas, seascapes or fields of flowers, yet it was almost always interesting, simply by the changes in the nature of the canal.”

Yes, there has been a lot of water under the bridge for the Erie Canal.

But you know what? It’s still here. — Detroit Free Press/MCT