Following the Erie Canal

Thank goodness for technology.  And the Internet.  And Wi-Fi.  That's kind of how we spend our evening, once we settle in.  Tom gets out his tablet and catches up , and I get out my lap top, upload the days photos, sort through them, crop and delete, and post my blog.  We both go over the next days plans, doing some on line checking.


Some nights have been more difficult than others, when we have a very slow hook up.  Tonight's is great!

It was a long, rainy morning drive from Lockport to Syracuse.  Using GPS we found the Erie Canal Museum we were looking for, and parking to go with it.  

In fact the street we drove in on used to be the original Erie Canal.

In the rain the street sort of looks like a canal.  And that building is the only surviving canal weigh house left in the world.


Canal packets for passengers or barges for freight would enter in the weigh house, which was full of water.  Like  a lock, gates would close, the water would drain out and the boat would be sitting on the scales.  Weight noted, and fee paid, the water would refill the space, the doors would open and the boat would float out.

The original Erie canal was hand dug, seldom using natural waterways, because the boats we not powered.  They needed the solid ground along side the canal for the tow path.  Horses or mules would pull the boats, averaging about five miles per hour.

After watching a video and seeing some of the exhibits, we got lunch at a great tavern across the street.

And then, using the map from the museum, we did an abbreviated walking tour of Historic Syracuse.  Fortunately the rain had stopped.


That pool is where the canal ran.  Those buildings were the banks that got rich from the salt trade here and the business that the canal brought literally right to their doorstep.

The lobby of one of the banks.

And this is city hall.

There was a farmers market in Clinton Square. The square is named after the New York governor who finally got the canal built.

We had intended to make stops in Oneida and Rome, but the things we wanted to see were closed on Tuesdays.  In Rome we did find another attraction, the Fort Stanwix National Monument.

 

This fort was built by the British in the 1750's, as they were competing with the French and the Indians for the territory.  It figured in the French and Indian War. It was then abandoned by the Brits and the colonists took it over.  

Then during the Revolutionary War the Brits put it under siege, and it's rescue involved a bloody battle in the woods nearby, with Indians fighting on both sides.  


Guard House, not an out house.

This is the actual site of the fort, but it was reconstructed in the 1975 for the bi-centennial.  It had been a national historic site before that.


It's location was strategic in that it was in the portage path between the Mohawk River and the lake, the only place in the area that the supplies had to be transported overground.

 And that gets us back to the canals, for it was here, on what is now the street right in front of the fort, that the first shovel of dirt was lifted in digging the Erie Canal.  The original canal was rebuilt and eventually mostly abandoned when the Barge Canal system was built, using as many connecting waterways as possible.  By now the barges were motorized.


Tonight we are in Utica, NY.  A block up the street are bridges over  the Barge Canal

 and, right along side of it,  the Mohawk River.

We are working our way back east, kind of making it up as we go along now, depending on the weather and what we find open from our list of possibilities.  We fly out of Boston Thursday evening.