E20 Whitesboro

Lock E20 is a plain workhorse — a sixteen-foot lift on the main line near Marcy — but the village it takes its name from gave the whole canal one of its indispensable men. Whitesboro was founded in 1784 by Hugh White; his grandson, Canvass White, is a large part of why the Erie Canal could hold water at all. Sent to walk the towpaths of England, Canvass came home, found a local limestone that yielded a true hydraulic cement — mortar that hardened underwater — and patented it in 1820. More than half a million bushels went into the canal’s locks and aqueducts; without it, the masonry would have leaked the whole project to death. West of here the canal climbs onto the long land-cut summit level toward Rome, leaving the Mohawk behind.