Niagara & Orleans / Western End

The canal’s western end is its most concentrated run of engineering and canal-town character. Through Orleans County the waterway threads a famous lift-bridge corridor — Albion, Medina, Middleport, and beyond — where the road decks rise between their towers town after town.

Then comes the grand finale: Lockport, where Locks E-34 and E-35 climb the Niagara Escarpment beside the restored hand-operated “Flight of Five,” the 19th-century engineering marvel that broke through the rock ridge and made the whole canal possible. From Lockport the canal runs paved and flat down to Tonawanda and North Tonawanda and the western terminus at Buffalo, where grain elevators once made the city a world port.

Don’t miss Albion & Medina and Lockport, and read the escarpment story in our history features.