E27 Lyons

Lyons smelled of peppermint long before it smelled of diesel. In 1841, the year the enlarged canal reached town, Hiram G. Hotchkiss founded the H.G. Hotchkiss Essential Oil Company on the waterfront; by 1860 it was distilling roughly a third of all the peppermint oil in the United States, and its founder was toasted as the “Peppermint King.” Lock E27 lifts boats 12.5 feet at mile 221, the first of three locks stepping through the Lyons and Newark stretch. Don’t mistake it for Clinton’s original ditch — this is a Barge Canal lock, part of the concrete-and-steel waterway finished around 1918 that replaced the hand-dug channel Hotchkiss first shipped his oil down. The Wayne County seat has been a canal town almost as long as there has been a canal.