Word: canals
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...talk like neighbors who have not seen one another for a while. Walker reports that the man who used to be in charge of the next lock, No. 22, died within the past month. Kaldefoss reports that he hopes to make a few more trips before ice closes the canal system around the end of November. Both men wonder how long it will be before the state of New York, which is spending in excess of $25 million a year to maintain the barge canal system, decides that it can no longer afford...
Their concern is understandable. When it was first opened in 1825 by Governor DeWitt Clinton, the canal provided the only practical way of hauling cargo across New York. For decades it prospered. But the coming of, first, the railroads, then oil and gas pipelines, eventually turned "Clinton's ditch" into something of an anachronism, and now, traffic on the system is down to a trickle. As recently as 1973, commercial shippers moved a total of 2,548,113 tons of freight on the New York State barge canal system. Last year they moved only 579,777 tons. Shippers have...
Kaldefoss, who has been sailing the Great Lakes and the canals for 30 years, speaks of the decline with sadness, for it is obvious that he loves the canal and the people who live along its banks. He shows his love by a flow of stories, like the one about the old man who used to blow a bugle whenever the Peckinpaugh passed, or the one about the elderly woman who still stands at her kitchen window and waves. His first mate, Stewart Gunnlaugsson, chimes in with stories of fogs that can blot out the canal's marker buoys...
...appreciate the canal too," says Kaldefoss as the Peckinpaugh eases into the first of seven locks that descend, like a giant flight of steps, from the Erie to Lake Ontario. "This is one of the last of the great bargains, and most people don't even know it exists...
This lack of knowledge is unfortunate. The Erie Canal and its tributaries do, in fact, offer something for everyone. The canal system provides shippers with an inexpensive way to move high-bulk goods like sand, cement and asphalt. It gives pleasure boaters a safe way of getting from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic. It even offers the salmon who migrate through Lake Ontario an easy way to reach their spawning grounds. "Some salmon still fight the falls," explains Gunnlaugsson. "But the smart ones wait below the locks and go upstream with the boats." -By Peter Staler