Canal Discovery w/ Doug Farley
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CANAL DISCOVERY: Commerce in 1948
Most baby-boomers still have vivid recollections of watching barges and other large boats laden with cargo as they plied the water of the Erie Barge Canal in the 1940s and ’50s. As a youth, I can recall looking at the boats and wondering where the boats were going and what were they carrying.
Here in Lockport, we have the answers to a few of those questions in the form of navigation reports kept by the chief operator of Locks 34 and 35. The chart below gives a little idea of the number of boats that used the locks during its cargo heydays and the kinds of commodities that were carried. The information was reported in 1948 by George J. Eddy, chief operator in Lockport.
• Tugboats — 582.
• Light Barges — 67.
• Light Tankers — 229.
• Fuel oil and kerosene — 165.
• Gas — 63.
• Molasses — 64.
• Wheat — 62.
• Corn — three.
• Scrap iron — 95.
• Newsprint — 14.
• Ammonia — six.
• Sand — six..
• Peanuts — two.
• Tar — five.
• Pig iron — six.
• Yachts — 371.
• Other boats — 87.
• Total boats —1,842.
Chief Eddy’s report also added that 914 boats were traveling westbound and the balance of 928 were headed east. The lock tenders also reported that they operated the locks 1,035 times during the 1948 navigational season, which opened April 12 and closed Dec. 4. Comparing the total number of boats with the total number of lockings, it appears that on about half the occasions, more than one boat was being locked through at a time. It must have been a pretty busy and interesting sight to see.
The commercial importance of the Erie Canal began to erode from these numbers once the St. Lawrence Seaway project was completed in 1959. New York State had determined that they would not adapt the Erie Canal to allow the largest ocean going vessels to travel the canal. As a result, most of the commerce that had been using the canal switched to the Seaway. The same phenomenon sounded a death knoll for Buffalo as a great gateway city for transshipping.
Doug Farley is director of the Erie Canal Discovery Center. Contact him at 434-7433. The Erie Canal Discovery Center is open every day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Canal Discovery w/ Doug Farley
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CANAL DISCOVERY: Lockport's story in stone
Part of Lockport’s Erie Canal story is found in its rocks. The rocks are part of what scientists refer to as the Lockport Formation of the Niagara Escarpment and were formed from marine sediments that were deposited on the floor of a great sea.
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CANAL DISCOVERY: Paddy Ryan — 'King of the Erie Canal'
The Erie Canal story is often told through the lives of those who found fame or fortune as a result of events in their lives which occurred along the canal. One such man was boxing great Paddy Ryan, “King of the Erie Canal and Champion of the World.”
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CANAL DISCOVERY: The Irondequoit Embankment
One of the challenges that faced early Erie Canal engineers was how to cross the Irondequoit Valley running between present-day Pittsford and Bushnell’s Basin near Rochester. Taking the canal across the valley without adding one 150 feet of up-and-down lockage was imperative.
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CANAL DISCOVERY: Main-line Erie and its lateral canals
In the year 1830, most citizens would have said that life in New York state had been made noticeably better by the Erie Canal. The canal was crowded with traffic, and population was rapidly expanding.
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CANAL DISCOVERY: New York’s big dig
The expenses for the construction of the Erie Canal began years before Joshua Hathaway turned the first shovel of dirt July 4, 1817, at Rome, N.Y.
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CANAL DISCOVERY: Raphael Beck’s canal history
The Erie Canal and its storied history has long been the subject of artist’s work throughout the centuries. Lockport, as the hometown of award-winning artist, Raphael Beck, can certainly be proud of several examples of our Erie Canal heritage portrayed through an artist’s brush.
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CANAL DISCOVERY: Brooklyn Daily Eagle — Sept. 24, 1899
Life on the Erie Canal was hard work for most of the year, but the winter months were another story. Locally, many canal families left their boats in North Tonawanda or other ports of call for the winter.
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CANAL DISCOVERY: Lockport's growth in numbers
The birth of Lockport is traced to the Erie Canal. To be more exact, the community’s history took root in 1816 when the state Legislature passed an act that gave assurance to land speculators that the path of the Erie Canal would traverse the area which would become Lockport.
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CANAL DISCOVERY: An Erie Canal landmark takes a ride
Land speculation, as well as land transactions for homestead settlers, was a common occurrence after the opening of the Erie Canal in the 1800s.
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CANAL DISCOVERY: Memories of 'Canal Boatmen'
Richard Garrity, the subject of a few previous articles, spent most of his life on the Erie Canal from age 2 to adulthood, starting out by working on his father’s lumber boat each summer.
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