The Erie Barge Canal to Waterford
Trip Start
Jul 21, 2001
1
16
45
Trip End
Apr 22, 2002
Waterford,
New York,
United States
Monday, September 3, 2001
Our next stop was at the town of Phoenix. There our dock lines were taken by several young brats. Yes, these were official brats and they had the T-shirts to prove it. Five years ago the young people in the town got together and chose as a volunteer project to clean up an old dilapidated park beside the river. These students were from 8 - 18 years of age. Their work over the last five years has transformed the area into a beautiful rest stop for boaters and people of the town. All the money for the picnic tables, the flowers and shrubs, the shade umbrellas has come from the "Brats". There is no charge for the use of the docks or any of the services provided by the students but most boaters make a donation which is gladly entered into a log book with your boat name, etc.
Eight year old Amber adopted our boat as soon as she saw the cats. She took Hercules for walks and because Sinbad wanted to stay below (for a change) she came on board to play with him so "he wouldn't be jealous". There is a small museum which Amber took great delight in taking us on a tour.
The students also water all the flowers in the downtown area and each morning do a garbage pickup of the area. In addition, you can also order from a takeout restaurant and the "Brats" take your order to the restaurant and bring it back to the boat for you. There are 8 adults who volunteer their time to supervise and teach, and this year there were about 50 student volunteers with 20 of them contributing all summer long. In the fall, the town holds a special evening to thank the volunteers.
What a wonderful group of people doing a very special thing for their town. Apparently, their actions have been written up in numerous publications. Students in the United States are eligible for Presidential Awards if they contribute 500 hours of volunteer work in their community or school. When I asked one of the students what the award was he said it was a framed plaque but the adult volunteer said it could be a scholarship of $500 - $1,000 when they went to post-secondary education.
August 30 to September 2
We waved goodbye to Amber and her friends and made our way up the rest of the Oswego Canal and entered the true Erie Canal which runs across New York state from Troy to Buffalo. In one of the brochures is a song by Thomas Allen written in 1905. One verse is:
I've got a mule, and her name is Sal,
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal,
She's a good ol' worker and a good ol' pal,
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.
We've hauled some barges in our day,
Filled with lumber, coal and hay,
And ev'ry inch of the way we know, from Albany to Buffalo.
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.
Reading these words in an article on cruising the Erie canal, I began to wonder how the mules and horses actually did their jobs. In an pamphlet entitled "Canaling, Oswego River" I found out more about the early days of moving freight along the river.
"A towpath was constructed next to the canal for mules and horses to walk on as they pulled the packet boats along. Men and their teams typically worked six hours on, six hours off. Seven and one o'clock were the usual hours for shift changes." There was a stable area on the canal boats and when shift time came a portable bridge from the canal boat to the towpath would be put down. "Workers always held the tails of the horses and mules as they stepped from the stable area over the bridge to the towpath. 'Tailing off' provided a steadying hand for the animals."
For the next few days, we travelled through a variety of areas. In some places, especially along the Oswego River, there were beautiful mansions. In other places, especially along the Erie there were shacks and old trailers. On the other side of Lake Oneida, we motored for over an hour through wildness without seeing any habitation or even passing any other boats. Each night we would tie up at a lock wall. The fee for using the system was $75 for unlimited nights but there was no charge for dockage at any of the locks.
I wanted to see a number of historic sites but with the long weekend, they were all closed so we travelled faster than we wanted since there really was nothing else to do but keep motoring through this varied area.
September 3
Today we did locks 7 to 2. Number 2 is the end of the Erie Canal at Waterford and across the river the town of Troy. These last locks are the "world's greatest series of lift locks. The total lift is 169 feet, which is twice as much as the total lift from sea-level to the summit of the
Panama canal."
Locks 6-2 are called step locks because they follow immediately after one another, whereas the other locks are on the average about 12 miles apart. As we were about to enter lock 6, we could see we were on top of a mountain with a valley in the distance. It takes about 2 hours to go through the series and it is quite the experience to take one's boat down a mountain side. Quite an engineering feat.
At Waterford, there is a new 300 foot town dock which was just completed two years ago. A beautiful Visitor's Information Centre welcomes you. The docking, showers and electricity is free and to top it all off, there is free Internet access at the visitor's centre. The local Senior Citizens group volunteer their time to staff the centre, each person working on the average of 3 days a week for 4 hours each day. The centre is open from 7:30 am until 8:00 at night. Certainly a major commitment for their group. The volunteers I talked with love it as they get to meet people from all over the world because this is the entry route not only to the Erie Canal but also to the Lake Champlain Canal system.
