North Tonawanda to Lockport, NY

Our wish came true this morning, and we caught a break in the forecast—the rain was going to hold off until the afternoon and the winds wouldn’t be as bad as yesterday. As we got ourselves ready, we found that our codes no longer worked to get into the bathroom building to shower. If I’ve learned anything from watching Jerry Seinfeld, it’s that good and bad luck must always balance out. We accepted our fate, packed up our boat and our unwashed selves and left North Tonawanda. We did pass a man bathing nude in the canal (no pics) so I guess that was an option. 

Next stop was Lockport, NY, 17 miles away. We cruised through scenic Tonawanda Creek until reaching The Deep Cut, a 7-mile portion of the canal that was dug through solid rock. There is a 5 mph speed limit on the Erie Canal, and many waterfront property owners help you to remember it with signs like this:

We also passed our first guard gate, which is a device used to stop water flow in the canal for maintenance or an emergency, such as a break in the canal wall or extreme high water. In the photo below, you can see one gate down and the other up, allowing water (and boats) to pass through.

Lockport, NY did not exist until 1820, when the final route of the Erie Canal was decided. Work on the canal began in 1817, but engineers had not solved the problem of how to lift barge traffic up and over the Niagara Escarpment, an imposing ridge of limestone that spans the northern states (think Niagara Falls). They finally settled on a location with “only” 60 feet of elevation change and the town of Lockport sprang up around the construction site. The final design called for two sets of five locks in a stair-step fashion (called a flight), allowing for two-way traffic. The flight locks at Lockport and the Deep Cut were the last items completed before the Erie Canal opened in October 1825. The original Flights of Five were replaced by a single flight of two locks in the early 20th century, which still operate today.

We are tied up at the lock wall that separates the top lock in the original flight and the upper modern lock. We secured Dragonfly, had lunch at Tom’s Diner on Main Street, then hit the museum circuit to learn more about the remarkable engineering feat that we are literally moored to (see below, above Kathleen’s head). Map link: Lockport, NY

One of the original Flights of Five has been preserved and is still operational, although no boats use it. Here are two of those locks, with the manually-operated doors open in between and a replica of a barge used to carry goods in the 1820s. 

The rain did arrive in the late afternoon and kept up until dark, keeping us inside the boat. We had leftovers for dinner and watched another Looper boat dock behind us, only one of three other vessels that we saw today.