Chenango Canal - Closing

Closing

The Chenango Canal opened in 1834. It was a necessary link in the interconnecting transportation system in New York, for which the need was well-recognized at that time. Canals had been employed successfully in England to enable the Industrial Revolution. The extraordinary success of the Bridgewater Canal in North West England, completed in 1761, began an era of canal building in that country. The U.S., intent on its own development, would follow suit. However, the advent of the Chenango Canal, after having been tied up in the New York Legislature for 19 years, came late in the canal era. By the time of its construction, this type of canal and its technology was already becoming obsolete. The invention of the steam locomotive had already occurred in England in 1811, and the development of a railway system had begun in England by the mid-1820s. The success of those technologies and systems there would allow them to supplant the artificial water-route systems everywhere. The railroads were more durable, more flexible, more efficient, more cost-effective and most importantly- faster than the canals.

In 1848, the trains finally arrived in Binghamton in the form of the Erie Railroad. The new technology had caught up with the Chenango and the arrival of the 'iron horse' spelled the eventual end for the canal. Over the next two decades the Binghamton area developed into a transportation hub. Along with the canal, the area was now being served by several railroad lines. After the Civil War, railroad expansion would come to include the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western, the New York, Ontario and Western and the Delaware and Hudson in the Chenango and Susquehanna Valleys. This ultimately rendered the canal obsolete. In a sadly ironic twist, it was the canal that carried the engines for the trains, the tools and the railroad men. It was the canal's own barges that carried the rails for the tracks that would replace them. It is also noteworthy that the D&H began its existence as a canal company.

Despite its success in augmenting the economic development of the Southern Tier and Central New York, the Chenango Canal itself had never been a financial success. After years of competition and decline and continual financial loss, by a vote of the state legislature the Chenango Canal was closed in 1878– just four decades and four years after it was opened. The land and assets were broken up and gradually sold, mostly at auction. Some of the properties were sold to private interests, some were deeded to municipal areas and others were held by the state. Much of the channel was subsequently filled in, and frequently paved over, particularly within the cities and the more populated areas. But some of the more isolated stretches of the canal were simply closed and abandoned.

While most of the larger towns, and all of the state, benefited from the triumph of the railroads, many of the smaller villages and hamlets did not. For practically every small settlement that was located on the line of the canal, but which was missed by the railroad, when the canal departed prosperity went with it. Two good illustrations of this are the once-thriving villages of Port Crane and Pecksport, where very little of either one is left today.

After 1900, a surviving stretch of the then-closed canal gained notoriety owing to its use to transport contraband through the town of Hamilton. Tobacco, alcohol (during Prohibition), and marijuana were transported along the canal. In order to control this traffic, NY State officials decided to build a checkpoint along its route. Surprisingly, over five million dollars worth of illegal goods were confiscated, from 1900 until about 1930, in what would become one of the most famous water-borne transportation enforcements of that time. Remnants of the stockade which was built can still be seen in the back rooms of the buildings currently housing the "Barge Canal Coffee Co." at 37 Lebanon Street and also the associated stockade on the corner of Pine Street and W. Kendrick Avenue in Hamilton. The Pine Street building was later converted into an asylum.