ROCHESTER, N.Y. – The Erie Canal, once mocked as “Clinton’s Ditch,” was built 200 years ago by Governor DeWitt Clinton. Now, his five times great grandson DeWitt Silber joined Governor Hochul for a new Wedding of the Waters in New York City Sunday to commemorate the bicentennial of the canal.
“I am DeWitt Silber, five times great grandson of DeWitt Clinton, the 6th governor of New York,” Silber said.
As News10NBC has reported all year, the canal that Clinton called “an imperishable cement of connection” is now more about recreation, quality of life and its place in the environment.
In the middle of summer, News10NBC’s Berkeley Brean hitched a ride on the Riverie, a tour boat docked in Corn Hill, to the most unique intersection in New York where the Genesee River and Erie Canal meet. It’s called the Crossing.
Patrick Russell-Walsh, executive director of Corn Hill Waterfront and Navigation Foundation, said it’s “something pretty rare in the world but we have one right here in Rochester where you can connect east west on the Erie Canal or north south on the Genesee River.”
Every year, tour boats take tens of thousands of passengers on the canal, generating $1.3 billion in tourism. A quarter of a million people go to Fairport Canal Days and there’s a bike ride from Buffalo to Albany that brings people from Minnesota, Colorado and Ohio. In Macedon, you can even rent your own house boat.
“It’s an adventure. It really is. I mean especially living aboard a boat, traveling along the canal, going through the locks. It’s a once in a lifetime kind of thing,” said Brian Keenan of Erie Canal Adventures.
In canal towns like Brockport, there are accessible kayak launches. That’s part of what attracted the World Canal Conference in September with people from 22 states and 11 countries. Brean used AI translation to talk to Cheng Hao, a canal tour guide in China.
Berkeley Brean, News10NBC: “What are you learning about the Erie Canal that you will take back to China?”
Cheng Hao, Grand Tour of Grand Canal: “The Erie Canal is extremely famous and many people in China know about it. Through this new way of engaging with the canal, people are enjoying the positive impact it brings to their lives today.”
There is still some commerce on the canal. As Brean rode the Colonial Belle to Fairport, it had to pass a massive barge pushed by a tug. The newest tug in the fleet is named after the foremost canal expert and late MCC professor Tom Grasso.
There’s also some work to do. The historic Fredrick Olmsted bridges over the canal in Genesee Valley Park have to be repaired or replaced. And back at the Crossing, they’re trying to understand the impact from all the sediment the canal dumps into the Genesee River.
To start the third century of the canal, the state is planting pollinator gardens. The first of 300 acres of gardens is starting in Brighton.
“The canal is hundreds of miles of land that go across the state of New York. It’s an interruption in the ecosystems in a lot of ways. It’s a big swath of land that could be doing more. It’s exciting to think about how something that was built for one purpose can also serve a lot of other purposes if we think creatively about how we manage it,” said Justine Heilner, the capital planning manager of the New York Canal Corporation.
The canal pollinator gardens will create a living space for bees, insects and wildflowers while also stopping run-off in heavy storms.
From ‘Clinton’s Ditch’ to tourist attraction: After 200 years the Erie Canal is about quality of life and the environment WHEC.com.
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