Canal Port, River Fort

There’s much more to the Niagara area than just the falls. It’s close enough to Lockport, NY, to visit a famous lock on the Erie Canal (finished 1825), and our campground on Lake Ontario shared the coastline with a 300-year-old fort that played a critical role in the French & Indian War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812.

 

First a bit of orientation. The Erie Canal crosses 373 miles of relative flatland from Lake Erie at Buffalo to the Hudson River at Albany and was the first, cheap way to get bulky cargo from the Midwest and Great Lakes to New York City and Atlantic markets. Originally four feet deep and forty feet wide, it was built entirely with man and animal power in just eight years. People called it a boondoggle when it started and an engineering marvel when it was completed. The canal used 83 locks (now 35) to handle the 570-foot elevation change from Lake Erie to the Hudson. Several other feeder canals were built off of this one, to both north and south.

 

Lockport, the town we visited, has the last set of locks before Lake Erie. It was famed for this unique “flights of five”—a double set of five locks each that lifted (right-hand flight) or lowered (left-hand flight) boats about 60 feet between the two levels of the canal. The oak gates on each lock were opened and closed by men pushing the cantilevered poles at the top of the gates. The locks were sized for the narrower boats used back then. (This 1880 photo from http://www.eriecanal.org/Lockport-1.html.)

Replica of a small workboat that plied the early Erie Canal. The more well known barges (packet boats) that carried goods and people were longer and flatter and famously towed by mules along a canal-side towpath. The canal’s creation opened the flow of commerce that ultimately led to its own demise: the rise of railroads serving the Midwest soon outstripped its usefulness.

 

A downstream view of the narrow flight of five still extant at Lockport. The town's locks were renovated several times to keep pace with upgrades along the entire canal to accommodate larger barges and boats. In 1915, the other flight of five was widened and reduced to two locks (now numbered #34 and #35) that did all the lifting and lowering of the original 10 locks. This flight of five was relegated as a spillway. The city recently rebuilt its oak gates (seen here open, tucked against the walls), and it has plans to restore the entire five-step lock.

  

The downstream end of the Erie Canal. The two-mule towpath along most of the canal has been converted to walking, bicycling, and horse paths. It’s still possible to piece together the whole route on foot or bike. I’d love to do that someday.

The wider two-lock system, now with steel doors activated by enormous gears and automated machinery, uses only two stages to step boats up and down.

  

Andy, the lock master, shows us a set of circuit breakers and generators for the equipment used to run the locks. It’s original stuff from the turn of the century (some modern safety features added). He completely dismantles, cleans, and polishes them each winter while the locks are closed. He’s been at this job for 20 years, opening and closing the locks for kayaks, tour boats, private boats, and light industry, and caring for the equipment year after year. He still finds it very rewarding.

Old-world controls that still operate the lock gates and filling valves/pumps. His little control booth also has remote cameras to verify boats are clear of gates, and high-tech computer monitoring of water levels, pump output, signal lights, and other safety measures that ensure he can’t open the gates too soon and that the boat pilots know what’s going on.

A small, dusty, onsite museum is stuffed with canal memorabilia: old maps and construction diagrams, photos and signs, whistles and signal lights. These Edison bulbs were in use in the early days of the canal.

A tour boat is moored in the first lock, #35. The downstream gates are closed, and the water level is already about 25 feet above the rest of the canal behind it. They’re just about ready to motor into the open gate ahead, for step two of the locking process.

 

The same tour boat, now in lock #34. It has gone through the middle set of gates, which are closed behind it. This bathtub fills and lifts the boat the final 25-30 feet to the upper level of the canal.

 

The tour boat is now way beyond the locks. This 1914 bridge that it went beneath has its own claim to engineering fame: it is one of the widest bridges in the world (129-foot span, with a whopping 399-foot road width). The bridge is basically a huge rectangle with its longest sides parallel to the canal. Two lanes of traffic cross the canal at the near end, two more lanes of traffic cross the canal diagonally, and parking lots fill the triangular spaces in between. Not one piling or post supports it in the middle.

 

Back nearer our campground, we visited Niagara Fort State Park and Old Fort Niagara, both technically in the city of Youngstown, NY. This lovely lighthouse is original to 1872 and was used through the early 1900s.

 

Fort Niagara is the oldest continuously occupied military site in the U.S. Started as a basic post by the French in 1659 to defend against local Indian tribes, it was used and added to alternately by the French, the British, and the Americans to defend the strategically located mouth of the Niagara River, which included access to the Great Lakes. (This importance later declined due to the Erie Canal.) Restored by the U.S. in the late 1920s, it’s very much like walking through 18th-century castle/military grounds in France or England. Thick stone walls, earthen ramparts, heavy wooden beams, and weighty cannon convey solid strength and indestructibility. This main gatehouse is a 1931 reconstruction to match the other buildings; the original gatehouse was wood.

 

Inside the “south redoubt” (fortified gateway), which was added by the British when they took the fort from the French before the American Revolution. Its purpose was to protect the fort’s main gate (previous photo) using a roof cannon and 20 live-in soldiers. A windlass like this, counterweighted with metal-banded boulders, would have closed the redoubt’s gate. By the War of 1812, America owned the fort, and the British came to reclaim it; they had to break down the redoubt’s door to reach the Americans inside.

 

A mix of the very old and the somewhat contemporary stored in the redoubt. The vacuum cleaner especially caught my attention. Where do you suppose they plugged that in?

A model of the peninsular fort as it was in the earliest days. Lake Ontario is at the left; the rest of the water is the Niagara River. The largest building on the point at the far left is the “French Castle”—more on that later. We’re standing in the provisions warehouse, the big building that’s almost in the middle of the model.

 

Soldier’s-eye view over the Niagara River. From this spot in 1813, the Americans would have fired on the British who had set up defenses across the river in what is now Canada.

 

Historical interpreters dressed in the clothing of various eras provide insights into life on the fort grounds. These are in British costume from 1812.

 

And these are American uniformed soldiers of the same time. Beyond them is the French Castle, built in 1726. It’s the oldest building in America’s Great Lakes region, and was the primary living and working quarters for the French garrison and later only for the officers. Although strong enough to withstand Indian attack, it was designed to look like, and be used as, a large trading house to ease the suspicions of the Iroquois. It was in use by army families as late as World War I.

One of the reconstructed soldier barracks inside the castle. Men slept side by side on a slant-board only six feet deep, their heads at the wall. Officers had their own well-appointed, two-room quarters.

 

Surprisingly, the castle’s kitchen had a faintly smoldering fire, making it the only warm spot in the building. Ken immediately cozied up to it on this chilly afternoon and came away smelling like a campfire.

 

First-floor trade room, outfitted as it would have been in the days when Iroquois and other tribes traded furs for manufactured goods. Other buildings on the grounds that are open for exploration include a blacksmith shed, powder magazine, provisions storage, and bakehouse.

Below is a demo of loading and firing American muskets (turn up the sound). Amazingly, both guns worked. The sound of a fife in the background is from a live piper playing from inside the castle. Dressed in British colors, she explained how armies used fife and drums to convey battle commands…the instruments, especially the fife, were all that could usually be heard over the noise of guns and fighting.