Posted on May 14, 2007

Students who helped clean up Lock 23 in Rotterdam

It was the busiest lock on the Erie Canal. In its heyday around 1880, it served 47,000 vessels a season – one boat every four minutes – on the Empire State’s most famous waterway.

Today, Lock 23 in the Town of Rotterdam is little known except by bikers and walkers who might give it a glance as they pass along an overgrown section of the Mohawk Bikepath.

Students work to clean up the old Lock 23 in Rotterdam

On Saturday, a group of students, faculty and staff from Union College worked with other volunteers to clear brush and small trees.

Saturday’s project revealed Lock 23 as a marvel of engineering, its meticulous stonework nearly as neat as it was century ago.

The lock was important historically as a busy transfer point for the overland route to Albany, which avoided waiting at locks in Cohoes and Waterford. Due to high volume, Lock 23 was expanded to a double lock. The lock doors are gone, but an observer can get a sense of what it was like as boats passed through.

Four years ago, Union students and faculty rebuilt the wooden pier on the west end of the lock; in 2001 they installed a replica of a locktender’s hut, the yellow and brown building on the site.

“I hope that this is a step in a longer term program of preserving and promoting this historic structure,” said Andrew Morris, assistant professor of history, who organized the event.

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