[The following story, in the Aug. 10, 2003, Albany Times Union, is
a follow-up to an earlier TU story in which two Union professors – Denis Foley
and Andy Wolfe – lead a tour of Erie Canal locks in the city of Cohoes. The original story is at: http://www.union.edu/N/DS/s.php?s=3870]
Canal tunnels are explored for tourism
potential
By Alan Wechsler, staff writer
First
published in Albany Times
Union: Sunday, August 10, 2003
Cohoes — There was no light at the end of the tunnel.
Instead, there was a
small, brownish stream flowing out of a 4-foot-high passage that led to miles
of underground hallways.
“That's
it?” asked Mayor John T. McDonald III, eyeing the portal into which his
elected duties would be taking him.
Without further
discussion, the mayor — outfitted for City Hall but joining the expedition on
a whim — rolled up the cuffs of his dress pants, put his black leather shoes
into the stream and headed into the bowels of downtown Cohoes.
A few days earlier, two Union College professors proudly announced they had found traces of two
locks from the original Erie Canal, which opened in 1825. By the 1840s, it had become so
popular that the state built a new wider and deeper canal. The original canal
was traded to a private corporation, which made a fortune selling water for
hydropower to mills.
But long after the last
mill closed its doors, there may once again be money in these forgotten
waterways, this time in the form of tourism.
“This would be a
wonderful tourist attraction for Cohoes,” said Andy Wolfe, one of the two professors who
unearthed the locks. “They have something very rare in the Erie Canal.”
Cohoes is honeycombed with tunnels — remnants of the old power
canals that were capped and buried over the years. The 500-yard section of
tunnel that professors Denis Foley and Wolfe and have spent several months
exploring is perhaps most accessible, if a stairway or elevator were installed.
It's 10 feet high and wider than a subway tunnel. The earth floor is dry and
the air, while clammy, smells more like a root cellar than a sewer. It could be
a comfortable place to view history.
But how viable are the
other Cohoes catacombs for visitors? The question posed by a Times Union reporter prompted an
expedition.
The spelunking trip on
Wednesday revealed a world that would send most casual visitors running for
their Winnebegos. The team, which consisted of the mayor, City Historian Walt
Lipka, General Services Commissioner Ken Radliff and Foreman Bill McCarthy,
plus a reporter and photographer, slogged through cobwebs, tar stalactites,
foul-smelling air and, at one point, waist-deep muck.
The tour began
inauspiciously, as the team descended a rickety metal ladder to the tunnel
beneath Cortland
Street. The men
moved up a slippery slab and, crouching to avoid the ceiling, entered the rocky
womb. The walls of hand-hewn shale blocks were built about 150 years ago and
are still holding up.
As darkness closed in,
the water got deeper. McDonald hitched up his cuffs, completely failing to keep
his legs from getting soaked. “I've got an engineering firm waiting for me
in the office,” McDonald said, standing in a foot of water. He trudged on,
without complaint, under Oneida Street.
The tunnel was the
vestige of a vast network that once crisscrossed the city. In the 1830s, when New York state decided to widen the Erie Canal,
it made a deal to trade the old canal for land owned by the Cohoes Company. The
group of investors made a fortune turning the old canal into the start of a
system that would extend down to the Hudson
River. The aqueduct brought water
to turbines that powered fabric mills. The turbines turned spindles that moved
hundreds of leather belts that worked the looms.
Cheap hydropower made Cohoes into, at one time, the biggest maker of fabrics in the
country, with 15,000 people laboring at 26 mills in the early 1900s.
“It was such an
ideal place at the time,” historian Lipka said.
The mills are long gone,
but the canals remain, albeit underground. Starting in the 1860s and continuing
for the next 100-plus years, the canals were capped in an effort to beautify
the city, make room for development and bury a fast-moving waterway that, not
infrequently, caused the demise of drunks and small children. “There were
a lot of drownings,” Lipka said. “They were always fishing them
out.”
The thought of drowning
came to expedition members as they pressed on through a section of tunnel that
had been replaced with 4-foot-diameter culverts. Had anyone checked the
weather? Could there be a flash flood? (The answer: The team probably had an
hour or so to escape should a downpour commence.)
Floods have been the
biggest problem for the tunnels. After serious deluges, inspection teams are sent
into the tunnels to see if there are any clogs or collapses. When Hurricane
Floyd attacked in September 2000, a 30-foot hole formed in a parking lot after
one tunnel collapsed. The city still hasn't fixed that hole, and a downtown
church parking lot has caved in four times since 1986, Radliff said.
The tunnels are also a
hurdle to building in downtown. Developers are required to fill them with sand
before constructing above to eliminate the possibility of collapse. After the
city demolished the 100-year-old Silliman
Church in 1998, officials decided to turn the site into a park.
The entire parcel across from City Hall was built over one of the largest
tunnels. Filling it would have cost too much.
After more than an hour
underground, the group, covered in sweat and cobwebs, reached a junction. In
the 1960s, this tunnel was deep enough that then-Mayor James McDonald (no
relation to the incumbent) sailed down it while standing in a rowboat. Today,
tons of silt has accumulated. It quivered like Jell-O when stepped on. At one
point, McCarthy sank to his hips in what must be one of the few patches of
quicksand in upstate New
York.
Exhausted and grimy, the
team ended the trip by following their tracks back to daylight.
The experience left
McDonald a bit damp but still enthusiastic for future tourism. “Everybody
who goes down here says, 'This is really cool,' ” McDonald said.
“Anybody who's interested in the Erie Canal is going to be
all over this place.”
He looked back at the hole in the
ground, and at his wet feet. “This,” he added, “may not be the
spot.”