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.
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.