Rochester and the Erie Canal – TX Grasso Chair WCC 2010

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Alabama

Atlanta, Georgia

Hudson’s Bay

Superior

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.New York City

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CANADA

USA

...ClevelandDetroitChicago

450 ft. +/-137 m.

Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor/NPS

NYS Marine Transportation Highway Tug at Waterford

Day Peckinpaugh Lock 17 Shaft LockLittle Falls

Commercial Slip

Canal District

Erie-BargeCanal 1918

Genesee Arm-Erie Canal

Great Embankment

Pre-Glacial Genesee Valley

James Geddes Map of Proposed Great Embankment c.1816 (NYS Archives)

New Great Embankment

May 1912

September 1912

David Edwards-MayEuromappingGrenoble, FR

1918 Court Street Dam

Rochester City Centre 1919 looking south - 1842 Old Erie Canal Aqueduct foreground

Genesee River Arm of the Erie-Barge Canal 1918Elevation 512 feet above mean sea level

Mill Race

Old Erie CanalElevation 509 ft.

Aerial View Rochester City Centre Looking South Courtesy: Democrat & Chronicle

Route – Old ErieCanal

Proposed New

EL. 512 ft.

Site Round Lock

C A N A L

T O D A Y

Court St.Dam

Elevation509 ft.

1842 Aqueduct

Courtesy David Edwards-MayEuromapping Grenoble, France

Allen St.

Looking West Through Aqueduct Across the Genesee River

Buffalo

Rochester

LockportSpencerport/Brockport

Medina Escarpment

Rochester and the Erie Canal - an Introductory History & Overview Thomas X Grasso, President, Canal Society of New York State, Rochester, NY, USA tgrasso1@rochester.rr.com www.canalsnys.org The Erie Canal is America’s most famous canal as it shaped a nation and gave birth to America’s boom towns. It was neither the first canal in America nor the last but it was the most successful as it was rooted in a fact of physical geography that for its entire length it was west of the Appalachian Mountains, North America’s eastern backbone. Short canals, as early as the mid and late 1790’s, were constructed in the Mohawk Valley to bypass obstacles to river navigation such as rapids, waterfalls and in one instance a narrow watershed at Rome, New York. These initial efforts proved to be unsuccessful. However the original Erie Canal (1817-1825), or Clinton’s Ditch after Governor DeWitt Clinton, uniting New York City and the Hudson River with Lake Erie at Buffalo was a towering achievement that gave rise to not only Rochester, Buffalo, and Syracuse, but also Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago. Vessels carrying 70 tons in four feet of water could now transport goods from Buffalo to New York City at a small fraction of their pre-canal costs. In every respect it was a James Brindley contour canal. Tolls, generated by thousands of vessels, paid for its construction and maintenance in only 10 years plus showed an enormous margin. Therefore the 2nd Erie Canal was born between 1836 and 1862; a seven foot canal where boats could float 240 tons. The Enlarged Erie was a Thomas Telford canal and cut-off many Ditch loops thereby shortening its length by 13 miles. Another enlargement program in the late 1890’s ended in disaster and the canal was nearly abandoned. The canal system was saved from extinction and a new 4th Erie Canal was launched by Governor Theodore Roosevelt in 1899, although construction didn’t begin until 1905. Completed in 1918, for through traffic, the Erie-Barge Canal was a different specifies, not a mere variation, of its predecessors. It operated differently, and the map of the old Erie was completely changed. Only 33% of the canal today is on its 19th century alignment. Rochester is a case in point because earlier iterations of the Erie Canal went through downtown Rochester while Teddy Roosevelt’s Ditch took an end run around the city but united with it through the Genesee River Arm. Rochester and the Erie Canal have been intimately interwoven from the beginning. Rochester became a major city and manufacturing center for flour, canal boats, and more due to the fantastic intersection of two very different water courses, both holding the promise of a successful future but in two different ways—the Erie Canal, an artificial river that provided an inexpensive means of transportation and the natural Genesee River that provided the water power to manufacture these goods. The canal may yet hold a future promise as an engine of economic revitalization, should the old Erie Canal be restored to downtown as first proposed in 2004.

Thomas X. Grasso is President of the Canal Society of New York State and First Vice-President and President Emeritus of Inland Waterways International. He has authored numerous publications on New York State, French, British and German canals and on New York State geology. Grasso was Co-Chair of the World Canals Conference held in Rochester, New York September 10-15, 2000, and is Chair of the 2010 Rochester World Canals Conference. He is the author of the plan to remove Broad Street and restore the old Erie Canal to Rochester’s downtown in its original bed across the city’s intact 1842 aqueduct. One of 6 children born to Italian immigrant parents in Lackawanna, New York, Tom received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Geology from the University of Buffalo and a Masters Degree in Paleontology and Stratigraphy from Cornell University in 1966. He was chairman of the Geology Department at Monroe Community College in Rochester from its formation in 1970 until he retired in 1999. In 1988, Grasso received the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. He was presented the Medaille d’Honeur in 2003 by the Mayor of Villeneuve-sur-Lot, France. In June 2009 he was invited as Special Guest of Honor to open the Braunston, England Historic Narrowboat Rally and Canal Festival and in September 2009 he presented at the Blue Links’ Closing Conference – Canals and Urban Regeneration in Lille, France hosted by Lille Métropole. Tom is currently a Commissioner on the U. S. National Park Service's Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor Commission.