View of Canal at Little Falls, New York, Showing Lock 37 in the Distance
The contracts for this route were let in 1821, eighty miles being let in contracts. The fifty miles between the Genesee and Seneca were completed this year. Business was more brisk on the completed Middle Section than in the year previous, the tolls received amounting to $23,001.63. Contracts were let for the entire completion of the Eastern Section, and boats were already running from Utica to Little Falls. A large fraction of the excavating between Little Falls and Schenectady had been completed by the last of the year, and the difficult problem of a route from Cohoes Falls to Albany was now solved by Canvass White by crossing the Mohawk.
By June, 1823, the canal was open from Rochester to Schenectady, and when the season opened 220 miles were navigable. During 1822 all but ten miles of the route along the Niagara River had been put under contract and the great Genesee aqueduct had been erected. Toll to the extent of $3,286 was collected in this year on the eastern part of the Western Section—at Lyons, Palmyra, and Rochester. By the middle of November water had been admitted into the Eastern Section and boats were afloat from Little Falls to Schenectady. Water was admitted into the stretch of canal between Brockport and Rochester, October 10, 1823. The forty-five miles from Brockport to the Mountain Ridge (Lockport) was well along; the four great embankments in this distance were nearly complete; that at Sandy Creek was the highest on the entire canal, running up seventy-six feet. The tolls in 1823 between the Genesee and Seneca amounted to $20,954.11, showing the large amount of business done.
As the last year before completion (1824) opened, all eyes were directed to two points in the west which were each difficult puzzles. One was the means of crossing the Mountain Ridge at Lockport and the other was the best way to get into Lake Erie. Finally the latter question was settled for better or for worse by letting the contracts for the Black Rock harbor. The work went slowly at the Mountain Ridge, but the contractors promised that the work there would be completed by May, 1825. The tolls this year between Mantz and Utica amounted to $77,593.26, and the tolls on the Eastern Section totaled up to $27,444.09. Water was admitted into the canal between Schenectady and Albany in October; the work here, which included twenty-nine locks, had been found unexpectedly difficult. On October 8, 1823, the first boats passed from the West and the North (Lake Champlain canal) through the junction canal into the tide water of the Hudson at Albany. On September 8, 1824, water was sent into the canal from Brockport and Lockport; the line to Black Rock and the Black Rock harbor was completed nearly on scheduled time. Among improvements of the year must be named the hydrostatic locks built at Utica and Syracuse. The tolls of 1824 were $294,546.62. The grand canal was completed.
The completion was a signal for a royal celebration throughout the state of New York which is, in many aspects, of great historic interest.[39] Its unique details, the non-participation of many, the violent rejoicings of others, the carrying out of symbolic ceremonies not unlike Roman pageants, all these and many other features of the great show have a deep significance. The political element entered largely into the matter.
Learning that the canal would be completed about October 26, the corporation of New York City entered into correspondence with the chief cities and towns along the line concerning the proper celebration of the event. Two aldermen, King and Davis, were sent to Buffalo from New York to participate in the festivities of the great occasion.
Buffalo was in gala dress on the day set for the pageant. The city was filled with yeomanry. At nine o’clock in the morning the grand procession formed before the court-house; the Buffalo band, squads of riflemen, and the committees took the lead and the vast throng moved to the head of the Erie Canal where the canal-boat “Seneca Chief” lay at anchor. Governor Clinton, the lieutenant-governor, and the committees were received on board, and Jesse Hawley, who, nearly a generation before, had published in Pittsburg the first broadside in favor of the canal, delivered an address in behalf of the citizens of Rochester, “to mingle and reciprocate their mutual congratulations with the citizens of Buffalo on this grand effort.”
The “Seneca Chief” was bravely equipped and manned for the occasion. Two great paintings occupied conspicuous positions. One presented the scene which was at the moment being enacted, Buffalo Creek and harbor with the canal in the foreground and the “Seneca Chief” moving away. The other picture represented Governor Clinton as Hercules, in Roman costume resting from hard labor. Among the articles of freight to be carried by this boat, which should first pass from Buffalo to New York over the Erie canal, were two kegs filled with Lake Erie water. In addition to the governor of the state and his staff, the Buffalo committee embarked on the “Seneca Chief,” comprising Hon. Judge Wilkinson, Captain Joy, Colonel Potter, Major Burt, Colonel Dox, and Doctor Stagg. The flotilla, which was headed by the “Seneca Chief,” consisted of the canal-boats “Chief,” “Superior,” “Commodore Perry” (a freight boat), and the “Buffalo” (of Erie, Pennsylvania). “Noah’s Ark” was the name of another craft which contained beasts, birds and creeping things—a bear, two eagles, two fawns, several fish, and two Indian boys, all traveling under the title of “products of the West.”
When the flotilla set sail a signal gun was discharged at Buffalo; the announcement was taken up by each gun in a long line from Buffalo to New York and the signal was passed throughout the entire distance.