The Erie Canal

For nearly a century, canal boats were pulled by mules and horse over this portion of New York State's Erie Canal. One of the slowest and most crowded parts of the waterway began north of the Flatts at Maplewood, where a tortuous series of 21 locks raised the canal to the Mohawk Valley and around the 70 foot cliffs of Cohoes Falls. Between this traffic to the north and Albany's busy lumber district to the south, the stretch through the Flatts was comparatively quiet. Boats that did not need to stop at Albany's harbor bypassed this portion altogether by using the sidecuts in West Troy, now Watervliet, just north of the Flatts to reach the Hudson River. Even so, nearly a hundred canal boats passed here on average every day in the mid-19th century. Early critics derisively called the original Erie Canal Clinton's Ditch; it was 4 feet deep, 40 feet wide, and carried boats up to 75 tons. Construction began in 1817 and was completed in 1825. Traffic soon overburdened the canal, and an enlargement begun in 1835 was completed here in 1842, expanding it to 7 feet deep and 70 feet wide and allowing boats carrying three times more tonnage than the original canal. With the opening of the Barge Canal in 1917, joining the Mohawk Valley directly to the Hudson River at Waterford, the canal along this section was abandoned and most of it was eventually filled in, though this small section remained unfilled.

Colonie, New York · United States