Rome, N.Y. – The gurgling waters that changed a nation now flow outside the Erie Canal. You’ll find them in a replica museum called Erie Canal Village, which features mule-drawn packet boats, petticoats and a blacksmith.
Here, canal contractor Judge John Richardson dug the first dirt at sunrise on July 4, 1817, to a cannon salute. Back then, farmers bartered for livestock. West of Rome, N.Y., lay wilderness.
Today, the spot where it all began is cut off from the actual canal, a solitary paean to the past, missed by millions who travel New York’s waterways and Thruway. To get there, tourists must drive Route 49 past auto parts stores and a Wal-Mart, then turn down a side road to the replica village.
Grade-schoolers still study the Erie Canal, which altered the course of U.S. history and made New York an economic power.
But to visit, where do they go? The Erie Canal Village is in Rome. The Erie Canal Museum is in Syracuse. The Erie Canal itself no longer stretches “from Albany to Buffalo.” Today it terminates in Tonawanda and Waterford.
For the past decade, officials have invested more than $500 million in the Erie Canal corridor, hoping to make tourist magnets of sagging waterfronts. Some say the canal is the best hope to restore upstate’s New York’s long-faltering economy. The corridor links the Hudson and Mohawk rivers to the Great Lakes, Finger Lakes, Lake Champlain and St. Lawrence Seaway.
In May, Gov. George Pataki announced the latest in a string of initiatives to revive the canal corridor. He would create a natural greenway, linked to corresponding tracts in the Hudson and Niagara river valleys. It will draw bicyclists, boaters and nature enthusiasts while boosting local tourism, he says.
His plans dovetail with a report due out from the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor Commission that recommends historic preservation, heritage tourism and recreation to pep up 234 corridor communities linking the Hudson River to Lake Erie and two Finger Lakes.
If it works, the corridor – home to 80 percent of upstaters – could become a destination like New England, with festivals, marinas, cycling tours, winter sports, national museums and valuable real estate. Such a place just might draw European and American tourists to a new “off the beaten path” vacation spot.
But as things stand now, canal towns, locks and exhibits are disjointed and obscure. State promotional efforts are underfunded and underwhelming. The state Canal Corp. halted an annual boaters cruise after the 2002 journey, saying it wasn’t cost-effective.
Canal marketers repeatedly refer to the waterway as a “world-class destination.” But Europe’s canalling boom isn’t replicated here. Visitors are slow in coming.
“If I’m driving west from New York or Boston, nothing tells me where the Erie Canal is or what there is to do along it or to see,” said Mary Means of Alexandria, Va., who created the Main Street USA program for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The corridor cries out for a regional trademark across its 234 municipalities, Means said.
Promoting a town here or there without a regional vision wastes the economic growth potential, said Susan Christopherson, a professor of economic development at Cornell University who has studied the Erie Canal economy.
Think Amish Country. A swath of south-central Pennsylvania, the area presents itself as one entity, with signs, trails and interpretive kiosks.
“In the late 1950s, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, made a conscious decision to focus on their assets and to market the rolling countryside, the Amish, the quaint places,” U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton said. “Now they have more than $1 billion a year coming into that county and they employ 20,000 people. … We have all that and more. ”
Think Ireland, another model, said state Assemblyman Robert Reilly of Colonie. The country surmounts its diverse geography by funneling visitors through one tourism board to oversee rentals, lodging and tours, he said.
The canal has “tremendous, tremendous resources,” from old locks to Underground Railroad sites, Reilly said. “But they’re not coordinated.”
Ironically, the Erie Canal – which helped America overcome the Appalachian Mountains transportation barrier – is now itself the victim of a barrier. Scant signage directs modern-day motorists to the historic waterway.
To better market the canal, a group of 50 business and municipal leaders spun off last fall to create an unofficial Erie Canal Chamber of Commerce. Pooling the resources of towns, tour boat operators and trail groups such as Parks & Trails New York can move marketing efforts beyond the limited Canal Corp. budget, said member Sarah Wiles, co-owner of Mid-Lakes Navigation in Skaneateles, N.Y.
Mostly, what the Erie Canal needs is recognition, said Eric Mower, the Syracuse-based advertising mogul who chairs the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor Commission.
“It’s about awareness. The Erie Canal was built by people from all over the world, by immigrants, laborers, engineers from other countries. It’s a fabulous story. It’s part of our (state) identity, like Broadway, like the Finger Lakes, like Niagara Falls.” Mower intends to market the canal as an American icon using such techniques as: