When the original Erie Canal, or "Clinton's Ditch," was completed in Port Byron in 1819, it transformed the community from a frontier settlement into a thriving canal town, and local citizens renamed their small village to emphasize the new connection. Canal boats carried grain, flour, lumber, and other goods from upstate New York and the Midwest, allowing Port Byron and many upstate communities to flourish as their cargoes reached new markets. That prosperity was threatened in the 1850s when the canal was enlarged and rerouted north of the village, creating a shorter route that bypassed the center of town, where businesses and industry had thrived along the original canal banks. Even so, Port Byron remained well known as a canal town through Lock 52, Kern's Grocery at the lock, the Erie House, and the Tanner Dry Dock, until the third rebuilding of the Erie Canal in 1917 took it still farther north and ended the village's connection to the canal. The canal's larger importance endured as part of one of the most successful engineering and public works projects in the United States: completed in 1825 as a 363-mile waterway, it created the first all-water navigation route between the Atlantic Ocean and the upper Great Lakes, opened the continent's interior to settlement and commerce, and helped make New York City an international center of trade.