FAMILY TRAVEL: Lockport & The Erie Canal

That’s the watchword of Mike Murphy, owner of Lockport Locks & Erie Canal Cruises. His boats cruise daily from the dock next to the company headquarters, an 1840s building that evokes the halcyon days of the canal when trade, commerce, and influx of residents created boomtowns in Lockport and other upstate towns along the canal.

Murphy and his wife Sharon started the company in 1987 with two pontoon boats and a dream. Today, three boats ply the historic waters, and their two 19th century buildings offer space for banquets, weddings, meetings, a small museum, exhibits, as well as a gift shop.

It was a perfect summer day for our cruise, which attracted people of all ages, including several sets of multi-generational families and a group from a nearby senior residence.

The original 363-mile Erie Canal opened in 1825 and is the country’s greatest and best-known canal. Connecting the Hudson River and the Great Lakes, it immediately became the fastest mode of transporting people and goods. Now in its third version, it is one of the slowest and its relaxed leisurely pace adds to its allure.

The highlight of the cruise is the transit through Locks 34 & 35, the only double set of locks on the canal. Three million gallons of water fill the locks and raise the boat 50 feet. The walls along the side of the canal here are 12 feet thick. During World War II it was illegal to photograph or paint these locks because the mechanism was the same as that on the strategic Panama Canal.

Every time I have “locked through” and watched the massive steel doors opening and closing, I am amazed all over again at the remarkable engineering feat of the early canal workers.

The original canal, known as “Clinton’s Ditch,” was built at a time when there were no engineers and vast sections of the state were still wilderness.

Our cruise takes us under the “Upside Down Bridge” and the “Big Bridge,” considered the widest bridge in the country at 399 feet. We cruised through the deep rock cut and under lift bridges. Mike Murphy, our captain, told stories of the early canal and the construction challenges in the area.

Old time canal songs played in the background including the popular “I got a mule her name is Sal.”

Lockport is one of the few communities where today’s canal still travels the route of the original canal right through the center of town. There is an air of renewal and rediscovery in Lockport these days. Under the direction of the Lockport Locks Heritage District Corporation, on-going projects are designed to highlight the city’s unique canal history.

When the Marquis de Lafayette, the French hero of the American Revolutionary War, visited the United States in 1825, he declared that Niagara County possessed the greatest natural wonder — Niagara Falls and manmade wonder — the canal locks — known in the world. Lockport’s locks were already regarded as a modern engineering marvel at the time of Lafayette’s visit. 

The Erie Canal was America’s greatest canal and the construction of the canal through the Lockport area was the most difficult of the entire canal. The canal is in the midst of its bicentennial since the first shovel was dug on July 4, 1817, and the entire canal up to Rochester was completed by 1823. 

It took two more years to complete the canal because Lockport sits on top of a massive ledge of solid rock known as the Niagara Escarpment. The countryside east of Lockport was 70 feet below. Somehow canal boats traveling west would need to be raised to the top of the mountain and those traveling east would need to be lowered. A single lock could not solve the problem. 

The solution was two sets of five locks each so that two-way traffic could be served. These locks were built from 1823 to 1825. A deep channel was also blasted out of the rock west of the town.

When today’s canal was built from 1909 to 1918, one set of the locks was replaced with two power-operated locks. The other set remained. They are Locks 67, 68, 69, 70 and 71 of the 72-lock Enlarged Erie Canal. They are often referred to as “staircase locks” due to the succession of one lock to the next.

 “We have reconstructed three of the locks with the goal of having the entire Flight of Five Locks rehabilitated by 2025, the 200th anniversary of the completion of the original Erie Canal,” explained David Kinyon, chairman of the Lockport Locks Heritage District Corp. 

 “When completed this will be a unique Erie Canal heritage site, the only site in the country with a set of two 20th century mechanically-operated locks and an authentic set of 19th century manually-operated locks.”

The fun part of this project for visitors is there are demonstrations of the restored locks Saturdays from 11 am-1 pm. The demonstration includes an early 19th century boat named the Erie Traveler built by the Buffalo Maritime Center. With its crew of volunteers who staff the boat and other volunteers who manually open and close the massive white oak gates, it is easy to imagine that you are back in the mid 1800s.

Saturdays are a good day for a visit because there is also a farmers’ market alongside the canal complete with live music.

Next to the Flight of Five is another Heritage District project that has quickly become a favorite selfie photo site. It is the Lock Tenders Tribute Monument designed to recreate an iconic 1897 photograph of Lockport Lock Tenders seated on the stone stairway in the Lockport Locks. 

The monument consists of life-size bronze sculptures of the Lock Tenders. So far seven of the 13 figures (plus a statue of the photographer) have been installed. The rest will be installed as successful fund raising allows. All the people in the photograph have been identified except for one. There was even a child in the photo, Bessie Wagoner, the daughter of one of the lock tenders.

The project celebrates and memorializes the 19th century lock tenders who worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, from April through November to enable boats to traverse the canal.

The canal attracted businesses and inventors and Birdsill Holly was a mechanical genius, who devised a method to use the water from the canal to power his factories. This was just one of many historical tidbits we learned as we walked along with our guide Katherine Keleher. 

She led our group of children and adults on a walking tour that is the first part of the Lockport Cave tour. Be prepared: there is much walking as well as many steep stairs. The highlight of the tour is a boat ride in an underground cave.

Our next stop was a 2,100-foot water-power tunnel blasted out of solid rock.

 “This Hydraulic Tunnel provided power for several of Birdsill Holly’s industries,” our guide explained. “After providing the power, the water was returned to the canal.”

Holly held more than 150 patents and his inventions include the fire hydrant, central steam heat, and the rotary pump. At one point, when we were deep in the tunnel, our guide asked us not to move and then turned off the electric lights plunging us into utter darkness. Fortunately, lights were quickly turned back on.

Our final stop was our underground boat ride, billed as one of America’s longest underground boat rides. Our boat was powered by an electric motor, and we glided along through the lifeless water with just a smattering of small electric lights to light the way.

It seemed fitting that the amazing ingenuity that helped to create the nearby canal and Lockport itself would attract a creative genius like Birdsill Holly. These tunnels have also attracted the Ghost Hunters show. During October, visitors can take the Halloween themed Haunted Cave Lantern Tour which includes the tunnels and cave.