The Canalway Trail System offers hundreds of miles of scenic trails and numerous parks for walking, bicycling, cross country skiing, and other recreational activities along the New York State Canal System, whose four historic waterways—the Erie, Champlain, Oswego, and Cayuga-Seneca Canals—span 524 miles across New York State and link the Hudson River with Lake Champlain, Lake Ontario, the Finger Lakes, the Niagara River, and Lake Erie. Created through cooperative efforts by the New York State Canal Corporation, volunteers, local governments, and federal and state agencies, the trail network serves public use and, when completed, will extend more than 500 miles through numerous cities, towns, and villages, making it one of the country’s most extensive trail systems. In Minden, double locks that once held the water and floating cargoes of the commercially successful Erie Canal instead contained tons of garbage in November 1999, including 125 tires, a snowmobile, a motorcycle, bicycle parts, refrigerators, kitchen stoves, and a television, before local preservation groups, businesses, and governments began rescuing and restoring them as connected paths and trails that link the past with present recreation. The Erie Canal also inspired artists from shortly after its opening in 1825, and painters including John William Hill, George Harvey, W. Miller, William Wall, and Wordsworth Thompson recorded canal views and daily life along it, leaving important historical and artistic documents of its early years.