The Erie Canal

Once a major transportation system, now a major walking path. Although, if you look closely at the right bank of the left picture below you can see the top step of a series that still leads down to the water today in case you want to load your boat here.

The Erie Canal Museum had many items I found interesting.

The museum is in a former canal weighlock building. The canal was originally a toll road. Boats were weighed to see how much should be charged for their passage. The gravel is where the water used to be and behind the big glass windows is a canal boat in the weighing area.

As you can see from the model below, not all boats were required to go through the locks. Some were canal maintenance boats and some had been weighed at other scales. In the background you can see the video game that teaches you about various types of boats and how the charges were based on types of goods carried as well as their weight. I made assistant dockmaster by weighing enough boats in a timely manner to help pay for the building of the canal. 🙂

We went aboard a sample canal boat. As you can see, there not much of it above the water–those low bridges, you know.

Boats, like RVs, make the best use of space possible. Here we see storage under benches where people could sit. And the very short beds available. Picture Dave rotated horizontally; I think his legs would hang off his from knees down. There was plenty of head room, though, to allow for maximum amout of cargo I suspect.

Reading about women’s jobs on the canal felt like I’d never left the Women’s Rights Museum. Note the secondary “position” women were expected to fill.

The museum had exhibits upstairs as well. You could climb the stairs following the levels of rising water painted on the walls or you could enter the lock, otherwise known as an elevator.

The inside of the elevator was painted to look like you were inside the lock on a canal boat listening to a father and son talk about the process of going through the lock.

Upstairs there were exhibits about other places in Syracuse. The tavern was my favorite one because of the sign on its register.

That’s all for today, folks. Hope you enjoyed the ride.

TTYL,

Linda