Erie Water West: A History of the Erie Canal, 1792-1854

7. The Canal Comes West

7 The Canal Comes West WESTWARD from the long Rome summit level, the completed line of the middle section was lowered near Syracuse to the lake country. There it passed over a lower summit from Nine-Mile Creek to the Skaneateles Outlet on its way to the Seneca River. The numerous streams abounding in central New York were laced to the canal by feeders and kept it plentifully supplied with water. At the beginning of the western section, the canal crossed over the Seneca River by a towpath bridge and passed through the Cayuga marshes to the village of Lyons where it took the waters of the Canandaigua Outlet and Mud Creek. After following the valley of Mud Creek to its headwaters at Palmyra, the canal was dependent for its water supply upon the Genesee River which was 130 feet above the Seneca River and 36 feet above Mud Creek.l A series of natural ridges solved the problem of carrying water from the Genesee River down the valley of Mud Creek to the Cayuga marshes, requiring only an embankment to be built across the valley of Irondequoit Creek at Mann's Mills. The discovery of these natural ridges was the cause for James Geddes' elation on his survey of 1808. They were the key to the western section of the Erie Canal. Plans in 1817 called for the canal to cross the Genesee 124 Erie Water West River behind a dam ten feet high with a bridge for a towing path, but an aqueduct was later found preferable. From the Genesee River to Lake Erie the canal followed Geddes' route along the famous Ridge Road rather than the more southerly route passing near Batavia, which had been traced out by William Peacock at the behest of Joseph Ellicott. The choice was a difficult one and the public presses of Rochester and Batavia maintained a lively difference of opinion as to the respective merits of the routes involved.:! In Buffalo the southern route was favored because it would guarantee that the termination of the Erie Canal would be at the mouth of Buffalo Creek rather than at the rival port of Black Rock on the Niagara River. By either route a ridge had to be crossed, for between the northern ridge which paralleled the shore of Lake Ontario and a southern ridge running from near Avon to the eastern tip of Lake Erie, a middle ridge lay like the bisector of a huge parallelogram.a The southern route was shorter and less expensive and passed nearer the larger settlements on the state road to Buffalo. But by this path the canal was required to rise seventy-five feet above Lake Erie and the consequent shortage of water induced the commissioners to direct the line northward. By cutting through the middle ridge near Eighteen Mile Creek, the canal would remain always lower than the lake, though it relied for its water supply primarily on the waters of Tonawanda Creek, Skejaquada Creek, and Buf1 Laws, I, 28, 452. 2 Rochester Telegraph, August 3, September 28, November 19, 1819. Still a third and more southerly route was advocated by Thomas Tufts and a group from Batavia. Tufts and others to Clinton, December 30, 1818, De Witt Clinton Papers, CUL. Elijah Hawley wrote to Clinton that although he would be benefited by it, this route could not be supplied by water. Hawley to Clinton, January 30, 1819, De Witt Clinton Papers, CUL. a John H. Eddy, Map of the Western Part of the State of New York (Newark, 18U). The Canal Comes West 125 falo Creek "rather than the fluctuating waters of Lake Erie."4 The canal therefore crossed the Genesee at Rochester and followed the northern ridge for sixty-three miles to the point where it crossed the middle ridge, then turned south through the Tonawanda swamp, and joined the Tonawanda Creek for twelve miles in its passage to the Niagara River. To use the water of Lake Erie whenever the level of the lake should make it available, the canal between the Niagara River and Lockport was carefully constructed with a drop of one inch to the mile. The long levels across the Cayuga marshes and from the Genesee River to the "mountain ridge" needed only mile on mile of digging, the construction of towpath on one side and bank on the other, and the building of locks, culverts, waste...