Stop 13- Oswego Canal Confluence: Getting to Port

 GPS- 43.050933, -76.149480

While it looks like an ordinary intersection today, this intersection was integral to the Erie Canal.

It didn't take long to realize that to get goods to port more easily, lateral canals connecting to the main Erie Canal would be a great way to even more efficiently move goods...

Enter: The Oswego Canal! Quite Literally around this curve!

In this photo you can see a boat exiting the Weighlock Building 

and angling to enter the Oswego Canal.

Because Oswego is roughly northwest of Syracuse, the course of the canal heads in that direction. It also followed the curve of the land in Syracuse around a hill, next to marshlands, along side Onondaga Lake, connection to the Seneca River before following, nearly parallel, the Oswego River to port. From there boats could off-load cargo before and restock before heading back to Syracuse. On this map, the Erie Canal is green and the Oswego Canal is magenta.

Why didn't boats just use the rivers? 

First, when canals were first proposed, boats were not mechanized and needed an exterior source such as wind, oars or animals to move a boat along.

Second, most rivers were not navigable due to the topography of NY. The Mohawk was navigable by small boat to Rome, but needed a "bateaux carry" to Wood Creek to head west. Not a great way to transport goods. Many rivers like the Seneca and Oswego had rapids that were not navigable. Canals became the next logical choice in shipping by boat.

In this pic, you can see the Oswego Canal next to the Seneca River.

So back to Syracuse...when this triangle of a land was created by making the Oswego Canal connect with an entrance angled east and one angled west. Canal boats could not turn easily and this angle allowed them to easily head in the direction they were going with less maneuvering. 

This area in 1834, just before the enlargements of the canal began.

A side note, the area labeled "basin" along the bottom edge is where City Hall is today.

Bridges, we have already discussed, connected the towpath for the mules and driver.

As time went on, the area changed as well

By 1850, the Weighlock Building extant today, was in place at the corner of Montgomery and Water Streets. In this birds-eye map from 1868, we can clearly see the Oswego Canal and its confluence with the Erie Canal...and a canal boat on it!

By 1874, commerce all along the Erie Canal and Oswego Canal is in full swing. Boat captains were commissioned with taking goods to ships that could sail Lake Ontario and the                St Lawrence via the Oswego Canal. 

(A winter view when nothing was moving along the Erie Canal)

Goods, in turn, could arrive on ship and fill the shops all along the canal. 

Lateral canals were a win-win economically.

The canal also went along the east side of the salt flats where boiling down salt water in "boiling blocks" were slowly giving way 

to the more profitable "solar salt" sheds in what is now the Inner Harbor. 

Barrels of salt could be loaded up and either head to Albany and the ports of NYC or to Buffalo and head to the regions beyond the Great Lakes or it could head to port, destined for places in Canada or Overseas.

Heading northward from Syracuse, boats could easily pass under 

the "truck eating" Parkway Bridge.

Going under the Sycamore St Bridge in Liverpool

The Mud Lock by the NW end of Onondaga Lake

The Oswego Canal near Phoenix, NY

Heading north...

Almost to port, by the red factory building, you can see one of the dammed areas over rapids. 

Even today, this area can be dangerous for motorized boats to navigate.

Today all that is left of this confluence of canals is the connecting of streets in the land.

I81 north of downtown was built on the the Oswego Canal footprint until it reaches Destiny USA at the north side of Syracuse.

And so...

...We'll continue on the Erie Canal Towpath, and not head up to the Port of Oswego.

Instead we head westbound...

Over the bridges that once were here and head west to our next stop...