Lock 17 on Erie Canal 1

Lock 17 on Erie Canal 1

A barge is in Lock 17 on the Erie Canal. A tug boat waits on the upper level. When it was built in 1917, Lock 17 was the highest lock, lifting or lowering boats over 40 feet at Little Falls, New York.

The Erie Canal runs 363 miles along the Mohawk River Valley from the Hudson River in Troy, New York, to Buffalo, to connect to Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, climbing an elevation of over 500 feet. It was completed in 1825 after 8 years of construction by Irish and German immigrants with draft animals. In the 19th century, barges carrying goods were pulled along by a mule walking on a tow path by the side of the canal. The original canal had 83 locks, contained areas in the canal, that fill with water to raise boats up to the next elevation, or drain water to lower a boat down. In 1918 a wider "Erie Barge Canal" was completed and about half of the old canal was abandoned. Connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes dramatically boosted the economy in New York City and along the canal route.
Condon, George. Stars in the Water; the Story of the Erie Canal. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974)

In 1945, Kosti Ruohomaa produced a photo essay for LIFE Magazine titled "Mohawk Valley." The accompanying article begins: "Along its 150-mile course from Rome, N.Y. to Cohoes, where it flows into the Hudson, the Mohawk River lies in a fertile rolling valley which, since before remembered history, has been a vital corridor through the eastern mountains” p. 103.

The article is a history lesson, touching on Mohawk Native Peoples, brutal 17th and 18th century wars, and the construction of the Eerie Canal. Kosti Ruohomaa took over 500 photographs for this assignment for LIFE Magazine. Ruohomaa's images include rolling farmland, historic structures,  memorial monuments, and dramatic natural wonders. Over 20 of Kosti Ruohomaa’s photographs were published in the November 12, 1945 issue of LIFE Magazine on pages 103-111.