Chittenango Landing Dry Dock
Near Syracuse, New York
Along the Erie Canal there were once dozens of dry docks where the long wooden cargo boats were hauled out of the water for repair and construction. Among the best preserved is the Chittenango Landing boatyard, built in the mid eighteen hundreds. At its peak the complex included three repair bays large enough to hold ninety-foot canal boats, plus a blacksmith shop, a sawmill, a woodworking shop, a supply store, stables, and a boarding house.
It operated into the early twentieth century, when the state bypassed this section of canal for the new barge canal. The site then sat buried under decades of vegetation until the nineteen eighties, when a group of local citizens armed with an eighteen ninety-five map dug in and began uncovering what was left. Over twenty-five years they restored what they found, and the site now operates as the Chittenango Landing Canal Boat Museum, a place where you can stand in a dry dock that once kept the Erie Canal moving.
