The area now known as Pittsford was settled in 1796 as Northfield, renamed in 1814 by resident and local war hero Colonel Caleb Hopkins after his Vermont hometown, and incorporated as the Village of Pittsford in 1827. Its history is closely tied to the Erie Canal and related transportation routes and industries. Big Springs, where Port of Pittsford Park stands today, was a major Seneca village whose large spring and pond supported the Seneca and attracted game animals; it also drew the area’s first non-native settler, Israel Stone, who built a log cabin there in 1789, and in 1909 the canal was widened and the spring incorporated into it while a small creek was redirected through a culvert. Lock 62 operated until 1918, when the Old Erie Canal was expanded into the Barge Canal and diverted south of Rochester; its double chamber lock, built in 1856 and enlarged with a second chamber in 1873, still survives in part. Just west of Lock 32, Widewaters was created as a turning area for canal traffic, and abandoned barge hulls can still be seen there when the canal is drained. Cartersville was a canal port where horse and mule teams were changed, with a basin, turn-around, cargo loading area, distillery, and warehouse, before becoming part of Pittsford. Schoen Place developed just after the canal was completed and was associated with flour milling, apple drying, and the wholesale trade in coal, grain, and beans; its flour mill dates to 1830 and its grain tower to the 1920s. The original Erie Canal route through the village, later called Clinton’s Ditch, was rerouted east around 1850 and remains visible as a depression behind homes. The Cartersville Guard Gate protects the canal section to the east, including the Great Embankment, which was built in 1821–1822 to carry the canal across the Irondequoit Creek Valley, enlarged in the 1850s and 1900s, and remains the highest canal embankment in the world. Rail transportation later became central to Pittsford’s economy: the Rochester and Auburn Railroad arrived in 1837, became part of the New York Central Railroad in 1853, and helped sustain agricultural industries after canal traffic declined; a second line, the New York West Shore and Buffalo Railroad, opened in 1883, was also acquired by New York Central, and remains active today as part of the CSX network. In the late 1930s, tanker hulls were built in the old Erie Canal bed south of French Road and floated to New York City for final fitting, and during World War II the company moved to the Town of Greece to build landing craft. More recent canal-related uses include Whitewater Park, created from the Erie Canal spillway at Lock 32 and opened in 2000 for kayaking, and the Pittsford Crew boathouse and indoor rowing center near Lock 32, whose annual regatta brings hundreds of teams each spring.
