Schoharie Crossing: Three Canals in One View

The Erie Canal did not come to life fully formed. It was rebuilt twice. This site, where the canal had to cross Schoharie Creek, is one of the few places in New York where you can see multiple phases of the canal's engineering life in a single view.

The original eighteen twenty-five canal crossed on a timber-and-stone dam. A decade later, the Enlarged Canal moved slightly north. By eighteen forty-one, a fourteen-arch stone aqueduct six hundred twenty-four feet long carried the widened canal over the creek. The aqueduct ruins still stand. Alongside them sit guard locks from the original canal, enlargement-era locks from the eighteen thirties, and the earthworks of the eighteenth-century Mohawk Lower Castle. Engineers, soldiers, and boat captains all left their mark here. The state historic site preserves three and a half miles of original canal trace and tells the story of how America rebuilt its greatest waterway as commerce outgrew the very thing it had just built.