E8 Scotia

The dam beside Lock E8 is a Bohemian import. When engineers canalized the Mohawk for the Barge Canal, they needed a way to pool a wild, ice-choked river without blocking it for good, and their answer — used all down this run of locks — was borrowed from the Vltava (the Moldau) in what is now the Czech Republic: a movable “bridge dam” whose steel gates hang from an overhead truss and drop like window shades to hold back the water through the boating season, then lift each winter to let ice and flood run free. E8 anchors the easternmost of eight such Mohawk bridge dams. Officially “Scotia” for the village on the north bank — though the lock itself sits across the water toward Rotterdam — it lifts boats a modest 14 feet at mile 24, gateway to Schenectady’s reborn waterfront.