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 ....

Stop 4: Cooper's Tubular Arch Bridge: Connecting

 GPS- 43.044061, -76.038435

The canal divided communities; bridges connected them.

Bridges were important piece of the canal. Without them, getting from the north side of the canal to the south side of the canal would have been tricky...requiring ferries or fairies depending on how far from the next town you were😎. They were integral pieces of the canal that allowed commerce and daily living to go on with a ditch of water running straight through town.

There were several types of bridges. Some were only for foot traffic. Some were for light rural use. And yet others were were more complex: allowing trolleys and heavy local traffic through cities to cross. At the the confluence of the Fayetteville Feeder and the Canal, you can see the remnants of the ramp that led up to the footbridge that once crossed there.

and the other side where the stonework has fallen into the canal

In this postcard pic, you can see the footbridges on the towpath.

Initially, bridges were often simple and wooden; later, they would be made of more durable materials like metal and have gears to operate them. The original bridges only needed to be high enough off the canal to allow a packet boat to clear it. But as boats became larger and taller, the need for higher bridges, especially in cities.

Some of the first patented bridges to be constructed of more durable materials were the Whipple Truss Bridges. Squire Whipple designed a durable Bridge out of iron that could be cheaply duplicated and installed along the canal. Only a couple extant examples exist today. More about them here:

https://friendsofalbanyhistory.wordpress.com/2020/11/25/squire-whipple-and-his-bridges/?fbclid=IwAR0t8WAPRqn0x0KqrgWfIsSC7hbG3An9EwR2XM_ZblPOFxjE2oUJAqWFnH4

A later style of bridge would be the Cooper's Tubular Arch Bridge we see here. Designed by a canal engineer, the Tubular Arch Bridge would replace many of the Whipple ones along the canal. More about the Cooper's Tubular Arch Bridge. More about the bridge here:

https://www.cnyhistory.org/2015/08/cooper-tubular-arch-bridge-erie-canal/?fbclid=IwAR2nG74tSTgQpUpSkfSn8qUTyeKSn07gmp9UDXsfKK_JLyHuG6Xyp7KsS7c

This Cooper's Tubular Arch Bridge is to original to this spot. One of the easiest ways to spot this is that the stonework, upon closer inspection is just not quite right. This one originally crossed a creek in Canajoharie.

It was rescued, brought here, and restored. But the stonework just isn't the same as the old stuff, close, but not the same. They did reuse old pieces of dressed stone.

Here in this pic of Downtown Syracuse, you can see iron bridge crossing the canal in Clinton Square.

Other styles of bridges were built further west in Syracuse. One of the problems in a city was the "Low Bridge, Everybody Down" was a constant danger to canalers in cities where bridges could cross quite frequently along the canal. So the low bridge in Clinton Square was replaced with a swing bridge! It could be swung out of the way to allow boats to pass, then swung back into place to allow carriages and the trolley to pass.

This one was replaced with a Lift Bridge that could be lifted out of the way to allow taller boats to pass but also allow pedestrians to cross regardless of the bridges position.

And over on the Oswego Canal, about a block away, a Bascule Bridge was installed to keep traffic flowing. More about that style bridge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bascule_bridge

But once the canal was abandoned. The bridges were removed. The ramps to the bridges were scraped down to street level, and almost all traces of the bridges that once connected communities were erased. 

With bridges across the canal, people could get to where they needed to go---the unsung heroes of travel! When the Erie Canal was replaced with the Barge Canal, bridges were removed and ditches filled in, and at-grade crossings made it easier for cars to get to where they needed to go in an ever faster moving world. But the slow steady pace of our imaginary canal boat, as we go down the towpath, continues on to its next stop...