E5 Waterford
Waterford · Mile 1.87 · Operated by NYS Canal Corporation
Barge Canal · 1918 — the Waterford Flight, lifting boats from the Hudson tidewater up to the canalized Mohawk River. Not the hand-dug canal of 1825. Which canal is this? →
History
Fourth of the five, Lock E5 lifts boats another 33.3 feet up the Waterford Flight — the run of locks that hoists a vessel roughly 169 feet in about a mile and a half, one of the steepest sustained climbs on any canal. A lock is really just a water elevator: close the gates, let the chamber fill, and the boat rises with it. What makes Waterford remarkable is how many of these elevators stand stacked back to back, and how little ground they cover doing it. E5 opened in 1915 as part of the New York State Barge Canal, the twentieth-century rebuild that carries traffic here today — not the hand-dug canal of 1825.