Chenango Canal in the Oriskany Valley
Model of a Chenango canal boat displayed at Hamilton Public Library made by Lee Brown Coye. Note the sweeps on the sides to enhance navigation.
It is so easy to whisk up the Oriskany Valley these days in a motor car that you probably don’t think of the place as ever having been isolated. But back in the 1820s, when the main stream of Erie Canal commerce was passing it by, the hinterland folks began to get a persecution complex.
Obviously what was needed was a canal for everybody. And particularly a North-South canal connecting the Erie with Binghamton, the Susquehanna, and the Pennsylvania coal country.
So up and down the Oriskany and the Chenango, folks organized themselves into a mass “pressure group.” They hired their own engineers to make surveys. They sent out promotion “literature” to
everyone of any importance. They bombarded the newspapers, and generally launched a lo-year struggle to “sell” the idea to the Legislature. (You didn’t think “lobbying” was something new, did you?)
In fact, it was hinted pretty broadly that Southern Tier legislators-no fools they-never would have voted for the Erie if they hadn't expected later to get some support for the Chenango.
Whatever they expected, it didn’t look for a time as though they were going to get it. Many and high were the hurdles. The lobbyists’ Hrst surveyor died before he finished the job. A couple of times the
Assembly voted the canal, but not the Senate. When the Senate finally voted it, the Assembly didn’t.
But then someone got the bright idea that there was a scarcity of water on the high level of the Erie near Utica. Obviously the thing to do was to tap the Chenango headwaters with a North-South Canal. That did it. In march 1834 the bill passed. A month later work started. Two years and four months after the Chenango Canal was finished - all 97 miles of it stretching from Utica to Binghamton.
And as such things look now it would take the next two centuries to get it filled in!
These locks at Oriskany Falls were lined with stone and masonry laid in hydraulic cement. They consisted of heavy wooden lock gates. Sluice is at the right through which overflow from the upper locks was carried back into the canal at the lower level. Limestone Ridge Historical Society
Actually, except in tonnage transported and tolls received, the Chenango was not so much of a Junior Erie as mot people think. It was 40 feet wide on the surface, 28 at the bottom, 4 deep. But so was the Erie for a good many years.
Originally, on both canals, if two boats 14 fewer wide drawing 3 1/2 feet of water could pass, the engineers were satisfied.
Today’s Barge Canal, of course, 200 feet wide on the surface, 104 at the bottom (wider curves), and 14 feet deep would make three or four Chenango. The state estimated one million dollars. The final cost was $2,3I6,8I6.
Compared to the Erie, which only went up and down 645 feet in 363 miles, the Chenango was a regular stepladder. Simply to get from Utica to Bouckville it climbed 706 feet. And it took 76 locks in 23 miles to do that. Even the Black River Canal in its hair-raising 25-mile route up the Boonville Gorge had only 70.
To push through the Chenango on the double-quick, contractors sometimes had as many as 500 men swinging shovels at once. Laborers’ shanties sprang up along the route. At one of them - near where the Deansboro CCC camp stands - took place Paddy’s Rebellion.
The state apparently had a forthright way of dealing with John L. Lewises in those days. It simply called out four companies of militia, mobilized them at Oriskany Falls, and “drums beating, flags flying and plumes nodding,” sent them against the recalcitrant workers.
The workers’ wives won a preliminary skirmish when they showed up swinging long cotton stockings filled with rocks. But at night the militia had established a Deansboro beachhead and locked up a few ringleaders in the village school.
“It was father’s entire military career,” the Rev. Samuel Miller, Deansboro pastor, used to say. “Having spent 24 hours of service of his country, he returned with neither pay, pension, medals, nor political preference. All he got was a couple of slugs of government lead, one of which he used later to shoot a mad dog.”
There had been, it seems, an anxious moment in the Miller household. Soon after the elder Miller left, his horse, not liking front line cavalry life at Oriskany Falls, came home without him.
This 1865 view in Oriskany Falls is looking west across Madison Street and up South Main Street with Lock 60 in the foreground and locks 61 to 63 in the distance. The warehouse at right later became an apartment house. Limestone Ridge Historical Society
Another old time view of Oriskany Falls showing the abandoned canal. Limestone Ridge Historical Society.
Not especially dainty were the canal workers. One West Hills housewife boarded a few, found them - perplexed by the first table cloth they had ever seen - surreptitiously putting their baked potato skins on the dining room floor. About the same time a canal caller at a canal-side shack found couple sitting around laughing while their three-year-old son and heir sprawled on the kitchen floor and tried to keep a hog from lapping up her breakfast porridge.
But, delicate or not, militia or no militia, the boys finished the job. They also wangled pay raises. Eleven dollars a month was the 1834 scale. By 1836, with the Utica and Schenectady Railroad competing in the labor market, it had gone up to $15.
The State - left holding the bag - agreed to pay the builders 20 percent more than the original contact price.
The finances of the entire project are fascinating. The “lobbyists” thought the canal should be built for $950,000. The state estimated one million dollars. The final cost was $2,316,816. The “lobbyists” estimated annual tolls at $140,000. The state figured $34,000. The average turned out to be about $20,000. The peak, hit exactly a century ago, (1847) was $32,000.
Originally the canal was supposed to go to Whitesboro. In fact,the boys had done $3,600 worth of digging in that direction, when Uticans offered to pay an extra $38,615 to bring it to their city. The
state accepted, but later when the Uticans were slow in paying up, cancelled the debt.
“The canal should have come to Utica in the first place,” legislators rationalized.
Not to be undertaken lightly in building the canal was the job of storing up a lot of Chenango River water and teasing it to come over into the Oriskany watershed--a $200,000 undertaking in itself.
The money was spent on an elaborate system of dams and feeders. The former created, or enlarged, a flock of seven little Madison County ponds-Lake Moraine, Hatch's Lake, Woodman’s Pond, Leland Ponds, Eatonbrook Reservoir, Kingsley’s Pond, and Bradley Brook Reservoir. Altogether they held back to billion gallons of water, all of which could be released to float canal boats as needed. And it still can be!
In its busiest years, a Chenango lock tender had to handle about a dozen boats a day. At the same time, Erie workmen were locking through 200.
In its busiest years, a Chenango lock tender had to handle about a dozen boats a day. At the same time, Erie workmen were locking through 200.
Although timid legislators had argued that coal was something of a passing fad and could not be counted on in estimating tolls, this, of course, turned out to be the Chenango’s top cargo. Laboriously it was shoveled from the boats by hand and carried away in wheelbarrows. Next came pig iron from the Franklin Iron Works, grain, limestone, and assorted commodities.
A few Civil War recruits headed South on chartered barges. For awhile the S.S. Will O’ the Wisp offered to tote passengers from Hamilton to Binghamton in 11 1/2 hours. Few fares were carried. In fact, if you want to be cynical, after you installed two cabins-an apartment with chintz curtains for the family, and a barn for the horses, there wasn’t much room to carry anything. Seventy tons of coal was a bargeload. Today on the Barge Canal it’s 37 times that.
Solsville in the early 1900s.
Solsville in the early 1900s.
In general-more so apparently than on the Erie-the Chenango canallers led quiet, even domesticated lives; kept out of historical novels; and, except for Philip Armour, who, legend has it, was once a Chenango mule driver, passed out of the picture without ever becoming famous. Son of a Stockbridge Valley farmer, Armour’s towpath days-if any-were few. Dismissed from Cazenovia Seminary after taking a co-ed for a buggy ride (naturally there would be a rule against such things), he soon left upstate to pan for gold in the West. He didn’t find much, but he did build up a $50 million grain and livestock fortune.
With 116 locks to go through, travel was slow, dull, and tiresome - so much so that probably even less energetic drivers than the sandy-haired Armour quit. Best time-legend has it--was made by an ale-laden barge which, when the bungs kept bursting from the heat of the Iuly sun, advanced to Utica by “jet propulsion."
Rare today is an Oriskany Valley octogenarian who, as a boy, didn't clamber on a canal barge and ride between locks. The more intrepid even went up or down a level or two.
In Madison, George Park is alive today because when he toddled into the canal at the age of 2, and an alert lock tender pulled him out.
As the years passed, the Chenango ran into assorted difficulties. The stone locks, lined with resinous Georgia pine, began to give trouble. Half of them had to be rebuilt. Many others began to lean forward, narrowing the I5-foot space between the walls to 14 1/2.
Meanwhile, the shipbuilders were making the barges wider, deeper and bulkier. Finally, in an annual report, the state engineer observed dryly that “it was becoming increasingly difficult to get I4 foot 8 inch barges through 14 foot 6 inch locks.”
The Kingsley's Brook Dam went out. So did a three-mile stretch of canal bank. Maintenance costs rose from $201 to $486 a mile. Farmers inched their fences closer and closer to the towpath until it became difficult for two tows to pass. While the northern section of the canal was going to pot, the state-with more energy than foresight-was pouring $1,600,000 into a 40~mile extension which was to channel the Chenango fleet direct from Binghamton to Pennsylvania’s coal country.
Impressive stonework as it appears today on the remains of Lock 72 at Oriskany Creek between Oriskany Falls and Solsville. Photos by Diane Van Slyke.
Work on the extension halted in 1872. In 1876 the last barge went along the Chenango. In 1877, by a one-vote margin, the canal was abandoned. Historians credit it as a victory for the railroad lobby. Immediately coal began coming north over steel rails. And- according to one Clinton old-timer-up went prices in a single year from $3 to $5 a ton!
Later-when building of the Panama Canal afforded the proper stage setting--a bill to reopen the Chenango was introduced in Albany. Nothing came of it. In 1905, The Utica Daily Press urged it editorially. Ditto. Today, if you want to be cynical, you can trace its route by following the “No Dumping" signs.
We went on a little Chenango safari of our own, and probably spotted a dozen or two of the original 116 locks, not including those which ended up in the base of the Oriskany Monument. Most of
them, as a matter of fact, were sold for $5 a lock. But after making away with the wooden gates and the pine-planking (if any), the purchasers let the stone stand. Most of it still is.
Optimistically we started out from the corner of Varick and State in Utica, the place where the Chenango mingled with the Erie. Not a canal boat in sight. Nor had they seen one lately at Evans 6:
Edwards Coal Company in Roberts St.- although that's why the firm first located there. In fact, up as far as the Overhead Crossing in Burrstone Road, the Canal has pretty well sunk without a trace.
At one time the locks in and near the city were the scenes of bitter battles between West Utica and Corn Hill youngsters. Each group sought exclusive swimming privileges.
Just beyond the Utica Products Company plant-near enough to Murnane Field so you could tell who was winning a game there by the cheers-begins one of the best preserved towpaths on the entire
route.
A regular little Adirondack footpath, it cuts through the Ninth Lock Woods, parallels the moist, water-parsnip strewn canal beds, takes you by three or four crumbling locks (one of them presumably the Ninth), and lands you, not very scenically at the N. Laino Sons dump in French Road. Leaving there (and there’s certainly nothing to keep you!), you can drive a couple of miles along the towpath to Campion Road.
Next it slants towards the second hole at the Yahnundasis Golf Club, traps errant golf balls for awhile, and finally comes out at the club’s rubbish pile, which is no swankier than anyone else's. Then it crosses Seneca Turnpike, follows the Clinton Road, and generally heads for the open country and Binghamton.
En route it is mostly a nuisance. Farmers wish they had never heard of it. Earl Peters, on the
Clinton Road has been ploughing closer and closer each year with the fond hope of some day getting rid of it. At the present rate it will take a couple more generations.
Near Franklin Springs, H. P. Osborn has been trying another approach. He has planted rows of corn in the canal bed itself and uses it as a long, narrow field.
Here and there someone has it pretty well licked. The canal shows only as a slight dip in an otherwise level meadow. Given a heavy rain, though, it may come back. When the Homer Spauldings moved into their Clinton Road home recently they were told that it once served as a “canal ofiice.” But it wasn’t until spring that they met the canal-a lake right opposite their front yard. Cinders will work wonders, of course.
You’d never know that Wittig’s Ice Cream Stand on the Seneca Turnpike, the Clinton Knitting Company, or Douglas Park in Oriskany Falls were right over the Old Chenango. It has a few uses.
One or two farmers raise ducks on it.
The Cassety Hollow Rod and Gun Club thinks it has found a way to raise trout in it. If they have they’re one up on the Kirkland Fish Stocking and Protective Society which tried the same thing in
1884 and failed. An Oriskany Falls householder uses one of the locks as a sort of terrace wall.
If you really want to explore, though, you might poke your way along the towpath between Oriskany Falls and Deansboro. There you can find trees up to 18 inches thick growing right in the canal bed. And to one lock wall now clings a cedar 24 inches in circumference.
At Franklin Springs, best example of the canal's lingering masonry, is the mysterious limestone tunnel which once channelled the Oriskany Creek under the canal, seeing to it that the waters kept from mingling illegally.
Remember: the canal builders were supposed to get their water from the Chenango and leave the Mohawk’s tributaries alone.
The best legacy of the Chenango Canal is the cluster of seven little Madison County lakes, ponds, and reservoirs beyond Bouckville. One of them (Woodman’s) provides water for Hamilton.
Thousands flock to the others on summer weekends for fishing, swimming, boating and camping.
At Eatonbrook, Madison County Boy and Girl Scouts camp; to Moraine, migrate Utica YMCA youngsters.
If barges no longer shuttle back and forth along the canal, the state meticulously cares for its $200,000 network of dams and feeders. In fact, it even cares for some seven miles of the original canal.
You can kayak along it, although a couple of barges I4 feet wide and 3 1/2 feet deep would do well not to try to pass.
Tree-lined, teeming with fish, reasonably free of barbed wire, a lot less muddy than the Oriskany, it’s not had boating provided you’re willing to overlook a few post-glacial oil drums.
There's a reason, of course, for all this lingering maintenance. After the Chenango was abandoned, the state still needed water for the Erie. So, instead of giving the canal water back to the Chenango
River, they continued to channel it over the Bouckville Divide. Today, a mile above Solsville, you can drive to the place where the state’s chaperonage ends abruptly. The canal water simply falls into - and at that point just about triples the size of-the Oriskany.
Currently, even though the state still can capture some of the Chenango water for the Barge Canal, it doesn’t much. Before the State Dam went out at Summit Park in 1925, it was able to channel
it into the high Rome-Utica Barge Canal level.
Now it doesn’t hit the Barge until it reaches Frankfort-and mostly there’s lot of water there anyway.
Canal engineers don't like to fill in their ditches behind them. Should business pick up on the Barge, it would be nice to have a little extra water around. As long as they feel that way you can still sail the Chenango.
From: Along the Oriskany by David H. Beetle Published by the Utica Observer- Dispatch 1947. Pages 23 to 32.
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