The Locks at Waterloo and Seneca Falls, New York
August 27, 2018 By BOB SCHOENING (Updated September 14, 2018)On August 24th, we took a drive up to Tyre, N.Y., to visit the relatively new del Lago Resort & Casino that my better half wanted to see. While she was there, I checked out the locks at Waterloo and Seneca Falls. This is an account of that excursion.
The first five photos below are of the singular lock at Waterloo, and the rest are of the twin locks at Seneca Falls. The locks at both locations are part of the Cayuga-Seneca Canal, a 27-mile long waterway that connects Cayuga Lake to Seneca Lake, and connects both to the Erie Canal. Cayuga and Seneca are by far the two largest lakes of New York's eleven beautiful Finger Lakes, all of which were carved by vast glaciers1 two million years ago.
(The 24MB original photos — 243 of them to be exact — were automatically shrunk, watermarked, and converted to B/W using my script image.py. It is available for free on my Github page. And in case you were wondering what this article has to do hobby electronics and programming, it's that image.py was used to process the photos.)
Fig 1 - Fisherman on the Cayuga Lake side of the Waterloo Lock
Other than having a lock in the center of town, another notable fact about Waterloo is that it is the official birthplace of Memorial Day. It also has an interesting Civil War cemetery and memorial located adjacent to the lock.
Seneca Falls has the distinction of being home to the first American women’s rights convention in 1848, and to a national park commemorating the event.
Both towns also have hydroelectric generating plants located near their locks. Consequently, Waterloo is "never" without electricity, according to the lock operator. Both plants are operated by Seneca Power Corporation.
Fig 2 - Pleasure Boats Heading West Toward Seneca Lake
It takes about 15 minutes to get through the single lock at Waterloo. Boaters are charged a nominal fee according to the length of their craft—so much per foot. They can call ahead so the operator is ready by the time they get there, but many just show up unannounced. Several boaters came over to talk to the lock operator while I was there. Two were interested in the lock itself, and one lady was just awed by the novel experience. A few years back a different operator even let my young grandson operate the lock. Whoa!
Fig 3 - B/W Version of Fig 2 Using image.py
Cayuga is my favorite lake because Ithaca sits at its southern tip—one of my favorite towns. From the park and marina there, you can see Cornell University perched atop a hill that overlooks both Ithaca and the lake. The best view of the lake is from the top floor of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art (free) on the Cornell campus.
Fig 4 - Lock Operator at Waterloo Lock
Between talking to boaters on the phone and operating the gates, the friendly and knowledgable lock operator was busy the hour I was there.
Fig 5 - Tugboat at Waterloo Lock
As mentioned, Cayuga Lake and Seneca Lake are the two biggest Finger Lakes. Seneca Lake (the larger of the two) is 38 miles long and over 600' deep, and about 3 miles wide. It contains over 3 cubic miles of fresh water. Cayuga is a bit longer at 40 miles, but narrower and shallower at 1.7 miles wide and 430 feet deep on average. Seneca Lake is the lake trout capital of the world, but sport fishing is also popular on Cayuga. And due to Seneca's favorable microclimate, over 50 wineries lie along it's shores. We attended a wedding last year at a winery on Seneca's western shore; views of the vineyards with the lake in the background below were dramatic.
Fig 6 - Guard Gate at Seneca Falls Lock Protects the Lock and Facilitates Maintenance
The double locks at Seneca Falls were completed in 1818 and Seneca Lake was connected to Cayuga Lake. Each lock stage raises the boat part of the way. There are a total of four locks on the Seneca-Cayuga Canal: lock #1 at Cayuga, N.Y., is not shown; locks #2 and #3 are at Seneca Falls; and lock #4 is at Waterloo. Each lock is 325' long, 45' wide, and 12' deep. They were built that large to accomodate commercial shipping, which today has been overtaken by rail and truck transport. Lock traffic today is mostly pleasure craft and tour boats, though since 2008 there has been an uptick in commercial traffic.
Fig 7 - Upper Seneca Falls Lock (#3)
The nearby Erie Canal was constructed from 1817-1825. Once completed, there were 83 stone locks between Albany and Buffalo and it became the second longest canal2 on the planet at 363 miles. By connecting Lake Erie to the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River, the Erie Canal provided cheap transportation for manufactured goods to flow from eastern cities westward, and for western farm products to flow east. It also opened the midwest to settlement, promoted the growth in population of New York State, and made New York City the busiest seaport in the United States. (New York City resides at the mouth of the Hudson River.) The Erie Canal was an engineering marvel in its day, and hard to overstate its importance to our great nation.
In 1828, the Cayuga-Seneca Canal was connected to the Erie Canal just west of Syracuse. In 1903, the Barge Canal project was begun in order to expand the Erie Canal. The Cayuga-Seneca Canal then became one of four branches3 of the 525-mile Barge Canal system. In 1992, the official name for New York's multi-branched canal system was changed to "New York State Canal System," which remains its name today.
Fig 8 - Lower Seneca Falls Lock (#2)
Lock operations cease for the year when boating season winds down. Last year they stayed open until mid-November, but there wasn't enough traffic to justify staying open that late again this year. The Cayuga-Seneca locks will close in mid-October in 2018. The waterway freezes up in winter.
Fig 9 - Boats Are Lifted a Total of 49' in Two Stages at Seneca Falls
For a detailed history of the New York State Canal System, check out their interesting pamphlet. It was written in 1925 by Roy Finch, a state engineer and surveyor, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Erie Canal. A paper version of the pamphlet was given to me by the lock operator.