On the Erie Canal

Everyone has heard of the Erie Canal.  Now we’ve seen it, or actually where it used to be.  The canal is now filled in and is now a road at this location. The Erie Canal Museum is in Syracuse New York and is located within a building that used to weigh canal boats.  They weighed them empty and then weighed them loaded to find out how much product the boat was carrying.  The toll was based on the weight.

 

I was surprised to hear that the canal was paid for in tolls after about 20 years.  Forty years after that they stopped charging tolls; though the canal was used for another 40 years.  Nowadays we seem to be always paying tolls on roads in New York whether the road is paid off or not.

They say that canal boats were painted bright colors to attract customers.  Apparently no one wanted to spend days on a black boat but instead like blue and pink.

 

And this is just because it’s a beautiful piece of woodworking. John’s done some amazing pieces of furniture, but there’s a lot of work that went into this.