E29 Palmyra

Palmyra was already the “Queen of the Erie Canal towns” when its most consequential export rolled off a press on Main Street. In 1830, at Egbert B. Grandin’s printshop in the village, the first edition of the Book of Mormon was printed — the founding text of a religious movement now counted in the millions. (Mind the geography the tourism brochures blur: the Grandin shop is in Palmyra proper, Wayne County, but the Sacred Grove, the Smith family farm, and Hill Cumorah lie south in the Town of Manchester, Ontario County.) Lock E29 lifts boats 16 feet at mile 236, a Barge Canal chamber dug as a land cut through Wayne County. There is no Lock E31 on the Erie — the lock it would have numbered was never built — so the count climbs 29, 30, then jumps to 32.