The Erie Canal is one of the treasures of New York State and one of my favorite places to walk. Today I started in the village of Fairport, a town that knows how to do the canal right. There are places to tie up your boat, restaurants, sightseeing boats, kayak and canoe rentals, shopping and parks. I came upon a group of women bicyclers from Ohio, who came to NY just to ride along the canal towpath. When I first saw them, they were just getting organized. Later, they whizzed past me, and I overheard one say, “What a pretty town this is.”

It’s hard to overstate the economic impact the Erie Canal had in NYS when it was finished in 1825. The canal cut the cost of shipping from $100 a ton to $10 a ton, and the time it took for a shipment to move from Buffalo to Albany from 28 to 8 days. At 363 miles long, it is the longest canal in the world. There is no other canal even half as long.

Now the canal is mostly recreational. There were lots of people out and about today, including a group of kids feeding these ducks.

Moving on, I passed this bench from the Benches on Parade, entitled Evolution of Distribution. It’s a perfect picture of how the railroad displaced the canal as the conveyor of economic opportunity, and how it was in turn displaced by the interstate highway system.

American ingenuity is just one of the things to be thankful for this Fourth of July.

Day 183: 12,152 Steps  YTD: 1,641,273 Steps Goal: 1,727,000 Steps