E24 Baldwinsville

Baldwinsville had a canal before the Erie was even a survey line. In 1808–09, Dr. Jonas Baldwin dammed the Seneca River and cut a private channel with a single wooden lock to get boats past the shallows — nearly a decade before Rome’s ceremonial first shovel — and the village took his name. Today the modern Erie runs straight through downtown on that same canalized Seneca River, lifting boats eleven feet through Lock E24, with Paper Mill Island and its riverside amphitheater set in the channel beside the chamber. It has a genuine claim to fame: E24 was the first lock of the entire rebuilt Barge Canal to open, on May 9, 1910 — so early that the machinery wasn’t ready, and a horse was pressed into service to swing the gates.