Chapter 8: The Erie Canal Part 3

Bicycling the Erie Canal Trail provides a wonderful history lesson. Often Rob and I marveled that we have lived so close to this historical gem and yet knew so little about it.

Past Syracuse we came to a rebuilt aqueduct.  An aqueduct is "an artificial channel for conveying water, typically in the form of a bridge across a valley or other gap." (dictionary definition)  In Rome, Italy, they built aqueducts to bring water to people. The orignial Erie Canal used aqueducts to route the canal across an existing river.

The river below the aqueduct.

The canal above.

Not far past the aqueduct we came to Sims General Store Museum, a replica of an original canal store staffed by friendly volunteers. From the care of the many exhibits we saw along the way it is clear that New Yorkers have a great amount of pride in the history of the canal.

Inside the museum we saw a model of the rebuilt aqueduct.

Outside we found an example of a stump puller. In the exhibits we saw they were described as being much larger than this one. 

An original lock gate has been retrieved and put on display.

A sign describes the retrieval process.

Shortly before Rochester, in the town of Fairport, we came to a lift bridge. From the song,

Low bridge, everybody down
Low bridge cause we're coming to a town

But that was before 1905 when they began building lift bridges to carry traffic over the canal. Sixteen remain in operation today.

This bridge is unique in that one end is lower than the other.  When we arrived they had just lowered it so we hung around hoping to see it go up again. But no luck. The kayakers didn't need the bridge raised.

Then, as we were leaving, we heard the signal that it was going up so I was able to get this picture. (There are more boats because we are further away.)