Lockport

One of the most difficult challenges that the engineers of the Erie Canal faced was the setting up the canal to go through Lockport. The canal had to be lifted up sixty feet onto the Niagara Escarpment. For two miles the channel would have to be blasted out of solid rock. They began work in 1822 and it took them three years to complete their work.

When it was done they had set up five double locks, five for going up and a parallel set for going down. These locks became known as the Lockport Fives, the channel ran for seven miles to through the Niagara Ridge. To get through the Deep Cut (the most difficult section) they had to blast free and haul away nearly 1.5 million cubic yards of rock.

That was only half the battle however. They still had to get water to flow through the canal as well. In order to accomplish this task they where able to propel water down from Lake Erie, the fifty miles of channel from Buffalo to Lockport were sloped at exactly one inch per mile. The accuracy was and still is amazing.