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The Canal and Region Today
Discover America's most successful and influential manmade waterway.
Most people know the Erie Canal from the familiar folksong, “Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.” What you may not realize is that although Sal the mule retired long ago, America’s most famous canal continues to offer a unique way to travel across the state.
Completed in 1825, the original Erie Canal traversed 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo, the longest artificial waterway and the greatest public works project in North America. The canal put New York on the map as the Empire State—the leader in population, industry, and economic strength. It transformed New York City into the nation’s principal seaport and opened the interior of North America to settlement.
Fueled by its success, the canal was enlarged beginning in 1835 to accommodate heavier loads. Clinton’s Ditch, at four feet deep and 40-feet wide, expanded to seven feet deep and 70-feet wide.
In 1903, the NYS Barge Canal System upgraded the Erie, along with the Champlain, Oswego, and Cayuga-Seneca Canals, with some significant differences in routing and technology. Built for self-propelled vessels rather than horse or mule drawn boats, the barge canal enlarged land-cut sections in the western portion of the state, while moving the eastern portion of the canal to the “canalized” Mohawk and Hudson rivers.
Today the Erie, Champlain, Oswego, and Cayuga-Seneca canals remain in service as America’s oldest continuously operating canal system.
Our National Heritage
The U.S. Congress recognized the Erie Canal’s significance to our nation by establishing the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor in 2000. The Corridor stretches 524 miles across the full expanse of upstate New York, from Buffalo to Albany and north along the Champlain Canal to Whitehall. It threads 234 diverse communities connected by a waterway that changed not just the landscape of our state, but also our nation and its history.
Whether you explore fifteen miles or five hundred, the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor connects history and nature with outdoor pursuits from boating to biking to birding.
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