Stop 8- Empire State Trail: From Waterway to Highway

 GPS- 43.049780, -76.071209

So how did the canal switch from boats traffic to car traffic...it is a tale 200 years in the making... (and first cars had to be invented 😉 )

First, both Clinton's Ditch and the Enlarged Erie both followed the curves in the land to get to the up and coming crossroads that became the first the Village, then the City of Syracuse. Erie BLVD once it passes west of Bridge St, it follows the old canal...here it is highlighted on the 1874 map:

The Onondaga Escarpment comes to end and the hills drop off leaving a valley for the canal to go through. James Geddes mapped out the easiest route for the original canal, which often involved using the curves in the land as "one side" of the canal with a berm wall built when just a plain ditch would not work.

Did everyone miss the canal? Short answer, no...an excerpt about from Edward Hungerford's book :

"They will not tell you of one thing, for of that thing you may judge yourself. Life in Syracuse is punctuated by the railroad and the canal. The canal is not so much of an obstruction unless one of the cumbersome lift-bridges sticks and refuses to move up or down, but that railroad! Every few minutes life in Syracuse comes to an actual standstill because of it. Men whose time is worth ten or fifteen dollars an hour and who grow puffy with over-exertion are violently halted by the passing of switch-engines with trails of box-cars. Appointments are missed. Board meetings at the banks halt for directors—directors who are halted in their turn by the dignified and stately passage of the Canastota Local through the heart of the city.

But the old canal is going to go some day—when the State's new barge canal well to the north of the town is completed—and perhaps in that same day Syracuse will have a broad, central avenue replacing the present dirty, foul-smelling ditch. Some day, some very big Syracusan will miss an appointment while he stands in Salina street watching the serene Canastota Local drag its way past him. That missed appointment will cost the very big Syracusan a lot of money and there will be a revolution[158] in Syracuse—a railroad revolution. After that the locomotives will no longer blow their smoky breaths against the fronts of Syracuse's best buildings and grind their way slowly down Washington street from the tunnel to the depot, for the railroad which operates them stands in the forefront of the progressive transportation systems of America, and it is only waiting for Syracuse to take the first definite step of progress. Some day Syracuse—Syracuse delayed—is going to take that step."

But once the canal was abandoned...what happened then...well, at first not much as the state still owned (and still owns much of) the old canal. This 1924 map shows the state owning the abandoned ditch:

And this one as well:

So while most municipalities left it abandoned, as they had no use for it, Syracuse had an idea: fill it in and build a road! 

But nothing is that easy, the city first had to buy the land back from the state to build the road...it's one of the few abandoned parts the the state does not own.

Some more info here:

https://www.syracuse.com/living/2022/02/thousands-partied-in-the-streets-as-syracuse-filled-in-the-erie-canal-which-severed-the-city-photos.html?fbclid=IwAR0MGzguqPLbi_aQrR5AvF0jsDMK0vwH7E2DxkLChJTs9lQPNU4wfKDjxs4

and here:

https://www.cnyhistory.org/2014/10/salina-street-reopened/?fbclid=IwAR1h6OM37V_xrQTD5Hde2YXN9tDUHqwOREnC6nIOvNybSnN2GmB3tXelXAo

And so, they bought the land back from the state and filled in the ditch with anything they could. You have construction debris? Dump it right here! You have the remnants of a building you tore down? Dump it right here! You have industrial waste? Dump it right here.😕

One day archeologists will have an interesting time sorting it all out 😎

And while once bicycles were made along its banks, now bicycles can ride along its path!

And cars too!

And The Erie Canal became Erie BLVD...and a parking lot for those new fangled automobiles

And now the Empire State Trail take bicyclists from Albany to Buffalo and beyond!

More about the Empire State Trail here:

https://empiretrail.ny.gov/syracuse-utica/syracuse-dewitt?fbclid=IwAR16bqkuTtf96wRM4O1DYjsWGQkV1xi_krMu51B3R52JYy1f9w3zD-2JSW8

And so, we continue our journey along to our next stop with our imaginary packet boat wherein times-past water filled these ditches...before traces of the canal disappear under the landscape below ....