Nine years ago, my husband and I set off on a long bike ride across New York State.
We started in Buffalo and headed east to Albany, cycling for much of the way on the 360-mile Erie Canalway Trail, which parallels both active and historic sections of the waterway that helped build the United States we know today. We crossed flat, vast expanses of upstate New York and coasted down long, rolling hills. We made a side trip to Skaneateles Lake and explored the glacial rock formations in the city of Little Falls.
We arrived home in the Capital Region exhausted but satisfied. During our week on bikes, we immersed ourselves in our state’s beautiful landscape, and even learned a few things along the way—like how the Erie Canal transformed New York into an economic powerhouse and reshaped the US by opening up the North American interior to settlers.
Today, there’s even more to see and do along the Canal, especially given the fact that New York State has made significant investments in communities along the waterway to boost tourism and recreation ahead of 2025, the Erie Canal’s bicentennial year.
“If you want to go to the Erie Canal, this is the year to do it,” says Jean Mackay, deputy director of the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor, which is based at Peebles Island in Waterford. “There’s going to be a lot going on—good celebrations, a lot of events, and opportunities to get out on the water and just really see and understand this part of New York’s history.”
For those of you who need to brush up on your state history, a brief reminder: The Erie Canal was the brainchild of New York Governor DeWitt Clinton, who had the crazy—no, insane—idea to connect Lake Erie to the Hudson River (and therefore New York City) via a waterway that would cut through the virgin forests, fields, cliffs, and swamps of central New York. Keep in mind, this was back in the 1810s, before the advent of modern machinery. Undeterred by the federal government’s lack of financial assistance and the general public’s lack of faith in the plan to dig a 360-mile-long ditch across the state by hand, Clinton raised the $7 million needed to build the Canal (or “Clinton’s Ditch,” as it was called at the time) himself. It was constructed on time and under budget. In 1825, the Erie Canal became the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, dramatically reducing the cost of shipping goods west. But its impact went far beyond economics.
“The Canal fostered commercial movement, but also the movement of people and their ideas,” says David Brooks, education director at Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site in Fort Hunter. “It fueled a little bit of everything.” For instance: the growth of manufacturing cities including Rochester, and the spread of religious and political ideologies including Mormonism and women’s rights. (It also fueled the displacement of indigenous peoples from their native lands.) The Canal continued to serve as a major pipeline for the spread of humans, cargo, and ideas until the rise of railroads in the mid-19th century.
These days, the Erie Canal is still used to move oversized manufactured items and bulk cargo, but most activity on the waterway is recreational. People bike, walk, run, and cross-country ski along the trail, and boating is also popular. Mackay says the number of people attending sanctioned events along the canal has increased significantly in recent years, a trend partly due to the rise in programs encouraging people to use the canal.
One such program, sponsored by the Canal Corporation and the New York Power Authority, is called On the Canals, and offers all sorts of free activities, from photography classes and stargazing to hikes. Another is the Canalway Challenge, in which participants pledge to complete personal mileage goals in the sport of their choice anywhere within the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor. In 2025, there will be a special 200-mile option; all finishers will receive an Erie Canal 200 commemorative patch. And then there’s Cycle the Erie Canal, an annual group bicycle ride from Buffalo to Albany which this year will take place from July 12-20. Included in the cost of the tour are camping accommodations, meals, and evening entertainment.
While there are plenty of places to access the Erie Canalway Trail locally, for those looking to learn what the Canal is all about, Mackay recommends checking out Peebles Island and nearby Cohoes Falls, as well as Waterford, one of many upstate communities that thrived during the Canal’s heyday. “You can understand why the canal was needed when you come to this area,” she says. “You can’t take a boat over Cohoes Falls. You have to find a way around it, and the Canal was the way around it.”
It’s been nearly a decade since I traversed the state on the Erie Canalway Trail, but I still get out to ride on it regularly. In recent years, I’ve enjoyed looking for bald eagles, many of which make their nests high in the trees above the Canal. It’s fitting, really, that America’s national bird would choose to make its home here—on a waterway that is in many ways the physical embodiment of the can-do American spirit. If only Clinton could see his ditch now.
Cheers to 200 Years!
Events commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Erie Canal will kick off later this year. Among other things, New Yorkers can look forward to:
The Journey of the Seneca Chief
Volunteers at the Buffalo Maritime Center have built a full-sized replica of the Seneca Chief, the boat that opened the Erie Canal in 1825. The replica will recreate former New York Governor DeWitt Clinton’s inaugural journey from Buffalo to New York Harbor this fall, with celebratory stops at communities on the canal.
Guided Paddle Through the Waterford Flight
The Waterford Flight is a set of locks that lift vessels from the Hudson River to the Mohawk River, bypassing Cohoes Falls. It has the highest elevation gain relative to its length of any canal system in the US. If you can’t make this guided trip on June 22, you can paddle the flight on your own—the starting point is Alcathys Boat Launch at Lock 6. Kayaks can be rented from Upstate Kayak Rentals.
Flotsam River Circus
This summer, Flotsam, a troupe of puppeteers, musicians, and circus performers, will board a ramshackle raft, and travel from Buffalo to New York City for the Erie Canal bicentennial. The schedule had not been finalized as of press time, but the troupe says it will stop in dozens of towns, including Schenectady and Amsterdam, between mid-August and mid-September.
