E6 Crescent

Lock E6 is the top of the Waterford Flight — the fifth and final step, lifting boats a last 33 feet before releasing them, calm and level, into the long Mohawk River pool above. Officially listed as “E6 Crescent,” for the hamlet just upstream, the lock in fact stands in Waterford, closing out the steepest stretch of the whole canal. And it marks a quiet transformation. Above E6 the “Erie Canal” stops being a hand-dug ditch at all: for much of the way up the valley toward Rome it is the Mohawk River itself, held at navigable depth behind movable dams — so that a boat now runs on the very water the original canal was dug to avoid. It opened in 1915 with the rest of the flight.