Operation of the Chenango Canal




  These locks at Oriskany Falls, NY on the Chenango Canal were lined with stone and masonry laid in hydraulic cement. Note the heavy wooden lock gates and the wooden sluice on the right through which overflow from lockage on the upper locks was carried back into the canal at the lower level.  This was one of nine locks in a single mile (Locks 55-63).

Chenango Telegraph
August 1, 1863

    The aqueduct just below Greene village is impassable - the flooring between two of the piers having given way. Boats moving south can gent further than Tillotson’s Mill. The Chenango Canal has been a most unfortunate ditch this season, some sort of break occurring on it nearly every week. We are told by a boat captain that in three months he has lost thirty days by detention from obstructions to its navigation of one sort or other.
    The various structures - locks, aqueducts, etc., - along it are rotting away year after year, and the state pays little attention to the fact. We know that the concern don’t pay, but if the State insists on carrying it on it should keep it in order. Let the proposed extension to the State line be finished and the canal will then pay.

Hamilton Republican
Thursday, June 4, 1864

    Chenango Canal - The business on the Chenango Canal opens this Spring rather more than brisk than for some years before. The total amount of tolls collected at the Hamilton Office during the month of May was $366.96. Total collected in May, 1863 was $266.66. Balance in favor of present season, $100.30. The largest amount of tolls collected in one day was $58.05. The largest amount in one day last year was $28.4. The largest number of boats passing the Hamilton Office in one day this year was 27. 
    The average number passing daily since the canal was fairly opened, when not obstructed by the break near Oxford is 12. 
    There are nearly one-third more boats running on this canal this year than last, and the tolls collected at the Hamilton office bear the same or a larger proportion.
Hamilton Republican
Thursday, September 15, 1864

   Chenango Canal - Commissioner Bruce and Auditor Benton are now on a tour of  inspection of the Chenango Canal. They were the guests of “Mine Host,” at the Wickwire House on Monday night. After a careful inspection of the first section, extending from Utica to this place, they are the opinion that navigation on this canal can not be much better until the streams shall be raised by powerful rains. The reservoirs with the exception of the Eaton Brook Reservoir, being entirely empty.
    The repair contractors, Messrs. A. Peck & Co. (the firm consisting of Mr. A. Peck, of Pecksport, and Messrs. J. Mason, W.W. Parker, A.D. Dunbar and W. T. Manchester, of this place,) have done all they could to keep the navigation good, and to do so, have drawn so freely from the reservoirs that they are now exhausted, and cannot be replenished until we have heavy rains.
    It has been a remarkable season for water, there having no rise in the reservoirs, not even an inch, since the early spring rains, and under such circumstances it is a wonder that navigation has been as good as it has until now.  Mr. Parker has personal supervision of the section this year, and has devoted all his time and attention to it. It has caused him much anxiety, because he could not keep the water up, but the dry weather has foiled his efforts in many instances.

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