The Flight of Five Locks on the

Erie Canal The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east-west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly reducing t ...

Lockport, New York Lockport is both a city and the Lockport (town), New York, town that surrounds it in Niagara County, New York, Niagara County, New York (state), New York. The city is the Niagara county seat, with a population of 21,165 according to 2010 census ...

is a staircase lock constructed to lift or lower a canal boat over the

Niagara Escarpment The Niagara Escarpment is a long escarpment, or cuesta, in Canada and the United States that runs predominantly east–west from New York through Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin, and into Illinois. The escarpment is most famous as the cliff over ...

in five stages. The locks are part of the

Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor The Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor is a National Heritage Area in New York State. It has created signage in a wide area, including placing signs many miles away from any historic site of the Erie Canal. The corridor includes 34 Nationa ...

. In ''Stairway to Empire: Lockport, the Erie Canal, and the Shaping of America'', (SUNY Press, 2009), historian Patrick McGreevy details the construction of the locks. The "Stairway" of McGreeevy's title is the Flight of Five Locks.

History

To carry the canal across the

, the engineers built a five-step staircase lock.

Restoration

The restored locks reopened in 2014.

References

{{reflist Staircase locks Erie Canal Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks