When New York Governor DeWitt Clinton first proposed the Erie Canal, critics mocked it as "Clinton's Ditch" and "Clinton's Folly," but when it opened in 1825 it was hailed as one of the world's greatest engineering achievements. Stretching 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo, the canal crossed difficult terrain, much of it dug by hand, with locks handling changes in elevation and aqueducts carrying the canal over rivers and other waterways. In this area, steep and rocky ground led to the construction of Lock 22 and an aqueduct crossing at Rexford, followed by another at Crescent downstream. The first aqueduct here, the Upper Mohawk, was built in 1825 and was replaced 20 years later by the Rexford Aqueduct during the Erie Canal's enlargement. Around 1916, as New York State developed the larger Barge Canal system to allow vessels that could compete with railroads, much of the Rexford Aqueduct was dismantled to canalize the Mohawk River. The remaining stone piers were later reused as the base of a highway bridge, and ruins and original stone blocks from the aqueduct still survive nearby.
