To many early travelers, Cohoes Falls was as much an obstacle as a scenic wonder. Over the span of a hundred years, three different channels and sets of locks were constructed to lift and lower boats 163 feet past the falls and rapids at Cohoes. The Erie Canal, built between 1817 and 1825 to connect the tidal Hudson with Lake Erie and the upper Great Lakes, passed through here on its way past Cohoes Falls. The waterway was so successful that it was soon clogged by boat traffic. When New York began enlarging its canal system in the 1830s, engineers laid out a slightly different route through Cohoes, a bit farther up the hill, and the Cohoes section of the Enlarged Erie Canal opened to navigation in 1842. Engineers who designed the New York State Barge Canal opted to carve an entirely new route through Waterford on the north side of the Mohawk. Completed in 1915, the five locks of the Waterford Flight remain in service today with the highest vertical lift in the shortest distance on any canal system in the world. Although side-by-side chambers allowed east- and west-bound boats to pass simultaneously, the sixteen locks needed to surmount Cohoes Falls represented a serious bottleneck.
