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

15. "Commerce Is King"

]5 ~~Commerce Is King" FOR ALL the phenomenal changes produced by the trade of the Erie Canal in western New York, the press of western goods was greatest as traffic approached the eastern terminus at the Hudson. Congestion here made the eastern section of the canal the first to be enlarged and fitted with double locks. The descent of the Erie Canal through the Mohawk Valley was dramatic. At Little Falls, nearly 400 feet above the Hudson, the valley narrowed to a gorge; steep escarpments rose on either side, and the canal followed the descending valley plain through the villages of Fort Plain, Canajoharie, Yatesville, and Fultonville. When Schoharie Creek was reached, canal boats first crossed the stream using ropes and windlasses behind a dam, but after 1845, they used a beautiful aqueduct of 624 feet, supported by fourteen majestic Romanesque arches. Twenty miles farther, the canal passed through the city of Schenectady, long the lower terminus of river trade on the Mohawk. Just below Schenectady, an aqueduct led the canal across the Mo· hawk to the north side of the river, which it followed for twelve miles until it turned south across the river again on a second aqueduct at Crescent, immediately above Cohoes Falls. The canal then began its descent through the famous nineteen locks, past Cohoes Falls, 280 Erie Water West through "Juncta," where the Erie Canal and the Champlain Canal joined, to West Troy or Watervliet on the Hudson. At West Troy the captain of a canal boat could lock into the Hudson and terminate his journey at the canal basin at Troy, which received about one-third of the commerce of the canal. Otherwise, the captain turned south with the canal, passed under the shadow of the United States Arsenal, and continued with the Hudson close on his left five miles farther to the Albany basin. Schenectady, Troy, and Albany each served as a terminus for canal commerce. Most passengers left the canal at Schenectady where they boarded the stage or the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad and saved a day's travel by canal. Troy and Albany shared also in the trade of the Champlain Canal as boats from the north crossed the Mohawk behind a dam in the river below Cohoes Falls to enter the Erie Canal at Juncta. By 1843, arrivals and clearances at Albany on the canal averaged eighty per day. They entered or departed from the Albany basin in the Hudson, which was advertised in a contemporary pocket guide as "one of the greatest works connected with the canal."! The basin extended for 4,000 feet at the river's edge and received sailing vessels and steamboats as well as canal boats. On the river side, the state constructed a great pier, wide enough for a spacious street and the privately owned warehouses which handled the vast quantities of goods arriving at the Hudson. For the traveler about to go north and west on the Erie Canal, here was the first introduction to the swarms of canal boats crowded against each other, the teams moving back and forth on the towpath, and to all the bustle and business of canal trade. 1 The Northern Traveller, and Northern Tour ... (New York, 1831), p.46. "Commerce Is King" 281 Shipments up the Erie Canal from the Albany basin reached 82,000 tons in 1836 and more than doubled again by 1852.2 Tolls collected at the first lock climbed to $385,000 in 1836 to make collections there the largest on the canal. By 1852, down-canal traffic annually brought to the Albany basin more than a million tons of property, valued at more than twenty-seven millions. Under the stimulus of this commerce, the population of the capital quadrupled between 1824 and 1850, numbering more than 50,000 persons in the latter year. Early rivalry between the canal and the railroad in Albany, after the Mohawk and Hudson began to operate in 1831, left the capital a divided town. The company impudently named its first locomotive the De Witt Clinton and the railroad itself was built by John B. Jervis, who had served as an engineer on the middle section of the Erie Canal. Life in the northern part of the city centered on the basin and the canal, while the southern part became known as "the railroad quarter." Some goods arriving at the Albany basin were transferred directly from...