Lockport Cave and Flight of Five

The land around Lockport lies within the homeland of the Haudenosaunee, the Six Nations, whose Seneca people held the western reaches of what is now New York and remain in the region today. The Erie Canal, begun in 1817, cut across that homeland to link the Hudson River with Lake Erie and open the interior of the country to trade.

At Lockport the diggers hit the Niagara Escarpment, a ridge of hard dolomite rising more than sixty feet. Rather than go around it, the canal's engineers built a pair of stair-stepped lock flights, five chambers each, so a boat could be raised or lowered through the whole climb. Completing this stretch in 1825 was one of the hardest parts of the entire canal, and the town of Lockport grew up around the labor and the water power it created.

By the 1850s the canal locks and the drop of the escarpment offered a huge source of water power, and industrialists wanted to harness it. Workers used the new technology of the day, including some of the early industrial use of Nobel's explosives, to blast a tunnel through solid rock beside the locks, channeling canal water to drive the wheels and turbines of the mills that lined the raceway.

The tunnel powered factories for decades before the mills faded. It sat largely forgotten until it was reopened for tours, and today a flat-bottomed boat carries visitors along an underground stretch of water, past the marks of the drills and black powder that cut the passage more than a century and a half ago.

The Erie Canal corridor through Lockport is a green ribbon through town, and the towpath and adjacent parkland draw a surprising amount of wildlife. Herons and kingfishers hunt the still water, ducks and geese raise broods along the banks, and turtles bask on logs in the warmer months.

Inside the cave, the darkness and steady damp support their own quiet life, and guides point out the small colonies of bats and other creatures that shelter in the tunnel. Above ground, the mix of water, stone, and old industrial structures makes the canal district a favorite for slow walks and birdwatching in every season the paths stay open.

Spring brings the canal back to life as boat traffic returns and the towpath greens up, a good time for a quiet walk before the summer crowds. Summer is the heart of the season, when the cave tours run at full swing and the locks and downtown fill with visitors.

Autumn brings crisp air and turning leaves along the canal, and the cave stays comfortably cool as the weather changes. Winter closes much of the underground touring, but the frozen canal and the snow-dusted locks make for a stark, handsome scene downtown.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.