All canals are a series of ponds, at different water stages, or elevations. These elevation changes are transitioned by locks, with the area between the locks being of any length, and referred to as a level. Simply put, canal transport is similar to a set of stairs, with the levels being the tread, and the locks the riser. The highest level of any canal is known as the summit level.
As water flows with any lock movement, it is necessary to constantly re-supply the canal, and by feeding the replacement water to the summit level, the entire canal may be supplied. The original Erie Canal, statewide from Albany to Buffalo, had three summit levels; Lake Erie, Jordan and Rome.
The supply of water was, understandably, a very important issue. New York State’s geography lends itself naturally to supplying a great deal of water for canal purposes. The earliest canal proponents envisioned tapping into Lake Erie as an inexhaustible source. This source would indeed prove inexhaustible for the western half of the Erie Canal’s length.
The outfall of the Finger Lakes, which supplied the Jordan Summit Level, further augmented this supply. However, this vast store of water could not be made useful any further east than the natural drainage of the Oswego River. The high ground east of Syracuse would have to rely on other sources to furnish the required supplies of water to make the system work. This region is referred to as the Rome Summit Level.
The Erie Canal’s first digging took place near Rome, on what would be that summit level. The location was politically convenient, as this section contained the longest distance between locks. This meant that the greatest distance of canal could be built in the shortest length of time, allowing the swift start of commerce.
Each generation of canal used slightly different methods of supplying water to this summit level. The supply of water to the Rome Summit Level has long been recognized as a dilemma. Indeed, the first report of the Canal Commissioners, March 2, 1811, placed the entire project in question. On the subject of a canal from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes they stated, “The Commissioners believe this to be impracticable from the want of water at the [Rome] summit level.”
Each of the canals demanded that the water level and rate of flow be controlled to optimize navigation. This was impossible, from a technological standpoint, on the first canal, the Western Inland Lock Navigation.
The original Erie Canal was plagued by freshets during the spring run-off, and low water during the summer months. These situations were improved on the Enlarged Erie Canal and its lateral branches, and planned for in the design of the Barge Canal by building a system of reservoirs.
These reservoirs would have to supply the summit, or highest elevation level of the canal. By supplying the summit level, the canal engineers maximized their water supply. The intention of a reservoir is to impound water when it is plentiful, reserving it for the low flow period in the summer, and delivering it to the canal in a regulated manner.
Water used in lock operations could be used over and over again as it flowed towards the next lower elevation. The constant flow of water was required for lockage, and also was used to replace water lost through power generation, leakage, evaporation, and transpiration by aquatic plants.
The reservoir structures required engineering complexities to make them operational. Large impoundments and feeder channels had to be constructed. These reservoirs would have to be located at a high elevation to supply water by gravity to the summit level.
These reservoirs would also become a way of containing and controlling devastating floods that had racked the state in years prior to their construction. These reservoirs would provide the locality nearby, usually off the main line of the canal, with an economic plus.
This benefit was provided by the construction and maintenance of the water control facilities, through generating power and water for industrial uses, supplying drinking water and an ever ready fire fighting store, providing employment, and eventually developing a firm tax base of lakeside residents, allowing for the construction of park and public use recreation facilities.
This is why the construction and maintenance of the summit level reservoirs of the Erie Canal is as important today to all residents of New York State, not only for their primary use as canal feeders, but for their secondary benefits as well.
The “Clintons Ditch” version of the Erie Canal and the latter enlargement share the same parameters of the Rome Summit Level. This level of the canal spanned 56 miles from Lock 46, at Utica, to Lock 47, at Syracuse. The Barge Canal version of the Rome Summit Level is considerable shorter, 21 miles.
The present Rome Summit Level extends from Lock 20 in Whitesboro to Lock 21 near New London (in Verona, NY). The Rome Summit level of the original and enlarged Erie canals had an elevation of 430 feet above sea level; the Barge Canal elevation is ten feet lower, at 420.4 feet above sea level.
The great difference between summit levels is because the Barge Canal, being a lake and river canalization project, takes advantage of New York State’s largest body of water, Oneida Lake, for its course. A portion of the original summit level of the Erie Canal was retained as a water supply conduit to the Barge Canal.
Water is supplied from this summit level to the lower levels of the canal on either end by lock movements, or by waste wiers. A waste wier is a structure that allows excess water in the canal to pour out of the prism in a controlled manner into a smaller steam that would flow, by gravity, to the lower side of the lock gate.
The natural drainage of the region is uninterrupted by the use of dive culverts. These structures, usually a concrete box or a round cast-iron pipe set in concrete, allow streams to pass under the canal prism. The small streams actually dive beneath the canal to emerge on the opposite side at nearly the same elevation.
The Rome Summit Level, which has proved an impediment since the construction of the first canal, should be valued as an asset of design success in the operation of New York State’s Canal network.
Rome Summit Level Reservoirs
The Canal Commissioners realized the need for a greater water supply and in 1847 and employed hydraulic engineer Henry Van Vleck to make a study. He recommended a reservoir near the headwaters of Chittenango Creek, and also raising the stage of Cazenovia Lake with a dam along its outlet. Engineer Henry Van Vleck also recommended a reservoir near the headwaters of Limestone Creek near the Onondaga/Madison County border, which could be additionally supplied by divering water from the nearby Tioughnioga River.
The Erieville Reservoir is located in Madison County, near a small village of that same name. The need for the reservoir arose during the major enlargement period of the Erie Canal. Reservoirs had been constructed previously on some of the lateral branch canals. These canals, more specifically the Genesee Valley Canal, the Black River Canal, and the Chenango Canal, had very lofty summit levels. These lateral canals were all designed with a summit level water supply system.
The Erieville Reservoir, started in 1847, was the first reservoir constructed to supply the Erie Canal’s Rome Summit Level. The design of the reservoir would rely on construction methods of earthen dams used on the lateral branch canal reservoirs. The reservoir would be bottom draining, to maximize head and volume delivered to the summit level. The outlet of the reservoir is through two 24 inch pipes conducted through the dam’s embankment and controlled by two valves in a masonry gate house.
The dam has a small overflow spillway, with the crest elevation of the reservoir controlled by stop logs. Stop logs are stout timbers that slide horizontally into a paired vertical recess. The water impounded must flow over the upper face of the stop log. Stop logs can be added, one upon the other, to increase the elevation of the impoundment’s surface. The overflow spillway is conducted over the down stream slope of the dam in a masonry channel. The overflow spillway and the outlet channel from the gatehouse join at the base of the dam to form the head waters of the Chittenango Creek.
The Erieville Reservoir, at its airy elevation of 1,509 feet above sea level, was completed and brought into use in 1850. The surface area occupied by the hourglass shaped reservoir is 307 acres. It is interesting to note that the village did not take the name of the famous waterway that it would supply. The village existed before the reservoir.
The reservoir is very often referred to as Tuscarora Lake. This euphemism seems to have been attached to the reservoir during the 1940s, very likely by the summer residents who formed an association by that name. It has become a commonly accepted term for the area, and is even labeled as such in some atlases of New York State.
Cazenovia Lake
Cazenovia Lake is a natural body of water known to the Iroquois people as Owagena. Very early maps referred to Cazenovia Lake as Lincklaen Lake, as John Lincklaen was the agent for the Holland Land Company. The lake was modified in 1857 to be exploited for canal purposes. The natural outflow had a knickpoint about half a mile from where it left the lake, in the vicinity of present-day Mill Street.
This cataract was removed and a masonry dam built at this location. The outflow steam was deepened from the dam back to the lake. This allowed the lake to be drawn down seven feet lower than its normal elevation of 1,191 feet above sea level, with the water stored used for canal purposes.
The waters of Chittenango Creek are introduced into the Cazenovia Outlet. The outflow waters of the Erieville Reservoir are augmented by Cazenovia Lake’s outfall to make the flow of Chittenango Creek very substantial. Additionally, another control structure near this confluence can impede flow of the Chittenago Creek, forcing it into Cazenovia Lake to be stored.
This gives Cazenovia Lake a unique ability to supply the downstream needs of the canal with its waters, or to use its basin of 1,184 acres to store waters supplied from Erieville.
De Ruyter Reservoir
The De Ruyter Reservoir was designed and constructed during the enlargement period of the Erie Canal. Because of a national financial panic, the entire enlargement was done on a protracted basis from 1836-1862, with various stop-work orders in between.
The reservoir was constructed to alleviate the critical shortage of water locking west from Syracuse. Surveys for the reservoir were taken in 1847 and 1856, but the contract for construction was not let until 1861.
The dam, which is located in both Madison and Onondaga Counties, impounds the headwaters of Limestone Creek. The dam is a quarter mile long, built of earth with a clay puddle core. The up-stream face of the dam is lined with hammer-dressed limestone quarried in Perryville, Madison County.
The reservoir produced is two miles long and half a mile across; the average depth of the reservoir is 18.5 feet and covers 626 acres with water. The greatest depth is 60 feet.
The dam, and the resulting reservoir, is located in a declivity that is the result of the last glacial era. The canal engineers located the dam near an area formed by a recessional moraine. This moraine was deposited during the Pleistocene, the last ice age to engulf New York State. This impoundment of glacial meltwater formed a natural lake in the same valley of larger dimensions than the present day body of water.
The outfall from this proglacial lake flowed north, forming the plunge pool lakes at Green Lakes State Park near Fayetteville. The water of Limestone Creek eventually eroded the glacially deposited valley head moraine by forming a deep gulf and draining the ancient lake.
The canal engineers took advantage of these natural circumstances and augmented the flow into the lake by locating a drainage divide about a mile and a half from the reservoir’s southern end. At this point they constructed a shunt dam across the Middle Branch of the Tioughnioga Creek.
Jamesville Reservoir
The Jamesville Reservoir is located on the Butternut Creek in Onondaga County, south of the village of Jamesville. The dam forming the reservoir was started in 1872 and completed in 1875. The Jamesville Reservoir was the latest of the canal reservoirs to be to be built south of the canal along the
Helderberg-Onondaga Escarpment.
The dam is constructed of a masonry spillway and an earth embankment. The spillway design is a departure from the typical impoundments built earlier. The crest elevation of Jamesville Reservoir is 640 feet above sea level, and its water cover 252 acres. A glacial meltwater lake also occupied the Butternut Creek Valley. The size of the glacier that covered the Syracuse area was so large that the outlet steam from the ancient lake initially flowed south.
The Jamesville Reservoir is four and a half miles south of the original and enlarged Rome Summit Level. The outflow waters of the Butternut creek are diverted into an artificial feeder steam, known as the Orville Feeder, the name Orville being the original name for what is now DeWitt. The Orville feeder joined the Erie Canal just west of the aqueduct over Butternut Creek.
The feeder can be seen today from Route 481, near the point of its juncture with the canal. This stretch of the Erie Canal has been recently popularized by the “strip” State Park that follows its course to New London, where its water joins the summit level of the Barge Canal.
This remaining portion of the former summit level is nearly 21 miles long. It incorporates the flows from storage reservoirs at Jamesville, De Ruyter, Cazenovia and Erieville.
The original plans for the Barge Canal called for the retention of this portion of the enlarged Erie Canal’s Summit Level as a navigable feeder. At their juncture at New London, a lock was constructed to pass boats between the level of the former summit level and that of the Barge Canal, which was ten feet lower in elevation.
This difference in elevation between the summit levels provided the gradation necessary to transport water to the point of greatest demand, the highest elevation. Retaining this portion of the former canal, which had no locks along its 21 miles length, also kept villages such as Canastota, Chittenango, and Durhamville connected to the canal.
However, the commerce along this branch of the canal was much less than anticipated. In 1924 a constitutional amendment was approved ending navigation on the short branch of the former summit level. The junction lock was modified to serve as a drydock, which it does to this day.
A drop-leaf gate was installed as entrance to the drydock, and the steel miter gates were used to replace wooden gates on the upstream side of Lock 3 at Seneca Falls. Along the former summit level, turned feeder, are three aqueducts over the Butternut, Limestone and Chittenango Creeks.
Although only a small portion of their trunk has been retained, the aqueducts are still very impressive structures. The water carried by the former summit level is discharged through a control structure slightly upstream of the junction lock.
Delta Reservoir
Delta Reservoir is located in Oneida County, five miles north of the city of Rome, on the Mohawk River. The dam that forms the reservoir is a concrete structure that closes the gap on what was, again, an ancient glacial lake valley.
The name Delta was given to the valley because its shape resembled the Greek letter Delta, an isosceles triangle.
The Mohawk River had carved through the valley head moraine, draining what had been an ancient glacial meltwater lake, leaving behind a broad depression with steep sides.
The village of Delta was located along side the Mohawk River in this valley. The Delta valley was first utilized for canal purposes by the Black River Canal. This canal, which was begun in 1836, connected Carthage in Jefferson County with Rome and the Erie Canal.
The Black River Canal was a very important feeder to the enlarged Erie’s Summit Level, because the water, stored in reservoirs and used in operation of the Black River Canal, would be deposited in the Erie.
The Black River Canal also had an additional feeder that diverted flow from the Mohawk River in the village of Delta into its prism. This made the Rome Summit Level of the enlarged Erie Canal the benefactor of all the water used to operate the Black River Canal, plus the additional amount stripped from the Mohawk.
During the planning for the present Barge Canal system, beginning with a survey by State Engineer and Surveyor Edward Bond in 1901, it was determined that this already vast supply of water would have to be augmented. The survey called for the construction of a dam across the Mohawk River where it left the Delta valley through a deep and narrow water gap.
The Black River Canal was retained as a navigable feeder, but would have its course altered to place it above the reservoir. The location of the dam would form a rather large reservoir about four miles long, taking the valley’s Delta shape. The construction of the dam and reservoir would flood the entire existing village of Delta.
The monthly publication of the State Surveyor’s Office, the Barge Canal Bulletin, of August 1910, expressed anguish for flooding Delta village: “the predicament of these people, who are for the most part worthy citizens, naturally inspires regret at the undertaking.” Articles published years later in the Rome Sentinel would lament the loss of the village because of its picturesque appearance.
A number of buildings were moved to the nearby village of Westernville, which is now located on the northeast shore of the reservoir. The largest building moved was the Empire Hotel. The location of Westernville determined the crest elevation of the reservoir, as it was decided that this village was growing at an appreciable rate. Other residents were moved to the west shore of the reservoir, above the flowlines. This small community is labeled “Lake Delta” on the New York State atlases.
The dam is over 600 feet long. It is constructed of a type of concrete referred to as cyclopean masonry. This differs from reinforced concrete in that the internal strength is provided not by steel rod but by very large and round boulders, the strength being sheer mass. The parlance of the canal engineers referred to these boulders as “plums.”
The dam has a center spillway. When the reservoir is at crest elevation, the overflow water cascades down the face of the dam. The apron of the dam is located at a depth well below the regular surface level of the out-flowing Mohawk River.
This declivity maintains a ten foot pool of water at the base of the dam. This provides a “water cushion” to break the fall of the overflow water and to prevent the erosive force from deteriorating the dam’s foundation.
The original plans for the dam included a highway across the top of the dam, with a double span bridge crossing the spillway. This plan, which is typical of many of the Rome Summit Level Reservoirs, was deleted prior to the completion of the structure. The control of the reservoir is maintained by gates on four 60 inch pipes.
Precautions were also taken to reduce the scouring action of the discharge pipes. A small dam downstream of the main structure provides a basin to quell the torrent. The water boils gently over the short walls into the Mohawk for the remaining distance to the summit level.
The reservoir’s name, like so many reservoirs in New York State, has been adapted to that of the nearest community. There was an effort it appears, in the official machinery, to name the body of water Lake Mohawk. This would have been a good choice because the waters impounded belong to the Mohawk River, and also the Mohawk people are the only Iroquois tribe not honored with the name of a lake.
The Barge Canal Bulletin in August 1910 resigns itself to the name in popular use, Lake Delta. This newsletter of Barge Canal construction progress remembers the lost village by quoting the well known Keats epitaph, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”
Hinckley Reservoir
Hinckley Reservoir is located in both Oneida and Herkimer counties. The reservoir is 24 miles directly north of the village of Ilion, and was constructed as a supply to the Barge Canal. This reservoir is the largest of all the Rome Summit level reservoirs.
The body of water is large in comparison to other lakes in New York State. The impounded waters stretch over six miles from the dam. On size alone, Hinckley Reservoir is the 37th largest lake in the state. The upper reaches of the reservoir extend into the Adirondack Park.
The size of the dam is equally impressive, it being nearly three quarters of a mile long, and seventy feet high. Unlike Delta, De Ruyter and Jamesville Reservoirs, Hinckley does not occupy the site of an eroded valley head moraine. That is the reason for the dam’s great length, as a wide portion of the valley now occupied by the reservoir, had to be cordoned off.
The dam’s construction was originally planned to be entirely of concrete; the actual construction was a compromise. The dam would impound the waters of the West Canada Creek, a rather large stream conducting sparkling Adirondack Mountain water to the Mohawk River. The dam has a concrete core wall extending its entire length. This core wall was the first order of construction, and was founded on the rock base of the valley.
The overflow spillway, 400 hundred feet in length, was placed above the original chasm of West Canada Creek. The overflow spillway is constructed of cyclopean masonry. An earthen embankment is formed against the core wall on both sides of the spillway. The upstream side is paved with revetment to protect the dam from the erosive forces of wave action. The downstream slope of the dam is protected by sodded turf.
The construction of Hinckley Dam and Reservoir displaced portions of the villages of Hinckley and Grant, but did not extinguish their existence, as in the case of Delta. Both of these villages are located today near the shores of the reservoir. The State Engineer’s final count of buildings removed was 209.
The controlled outflow of the Hinckley reservoir mirrors that of Delta Reservoir, four 60 inch diameter pipes. However, Hinckley Reservoir has an additional head race that provides drinking water to the city of Utica. This provision was included in the original construction, and is maintained to present day.
The natural flow of West Canada Creek is south and east of the reservoir, ending in confluence with the canalized Mohawk River near the village of Herkimer. This natural course deposits its waters east beyond the Rome Summit Level, at a considerably lower level. To make the stored waters of Hinckley Reservoir supply the summit, the engineers had to provide a second and much smaller dam downstream of the reservoir near the town of Trenton Falls, and an artificial channel.
This dam is a shunt dam, similar to that discussed earlier in use on the De Ruyter Reservoir. This particular dam is constructed of concrete and has a single Taintor Gate control structure. The pool created by this dam allows water to be diverted through another control gate structure into an artificial channel.
The gatehouse is made of concrete, and resembles the Italianate style of all Barge Canal powerhouses. This artificial channel is 5.7 miles long, twelve and a half feet across and five feet deep. This artificial channel is not given the individual identification of a name and is referred to in numerous texts and on U.S.G.S. topographic maps as simply “canal feeder.” This seems very unfortunate for such an industrious project. This conduit of hydraulic power deserves an appellation worth its great contribution.
This feeder passes under the Cincinatus Creek by means of a complicated concrete structure that operates on the principle of a siphon. The structure also has an automatic crest spillway that will pour overflow waters from the feeder into the Cincinatus Creek. The feeder continues on south and west to a point where it is intercepted by Nine Mile Creek. The final length of the feeder flows through a concrete flume, to prevent erosion of the banks,
as it drops to the elevation of Nine Mile Creek.
The stored waters from the reservoir then flow, by natural conveyances, to the Rome Summit Level. Original Barge Canal construction plans called for construction of another storage reservoir on the Nine Mile Creek near the village of Stittville. However, this facility was never constructed.
Other Reservoirs
There were other Rome Summit Level reservoirs planned, surveyed for, yet never built. A reservoir along the Oneida Creek known as Pine Bush was designed and considered during the Civil War. The entry of England on the side of the Confederacy seemed very possible at one time. Great Britain’s attack would generate almost assuredly from her colonies in Canada.
To counter this thrust, the expansion of the Erie Canal was examined. This enlargement would allow Union Gunboats to move from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes to oppose the invading British. To augment the water supply, the Pine Bush reservoir would be built adjacent to Madison County’s only city, Oneida. An expedient also planned was raising the crest elevation of De Ruyter Reservoir by ten feet.
Constructing the Pine Bush reservoir and raising the De Ruyter Reservoir was waylaid, as well as the involvement of Great Britain in the Civil War, by President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
Another planned reservoir was for the Onondaga Creek near Cardiff, about 10 miles south of Syracuse. At this location, there has been a federal flood control structure constructed, but the outflow is not used for canal purposes.
Another large reservoir surveyed and considered would have been located between Jamesville and Fayetteville, also in Onondaga County near the small community of High Bridge. This reservoir was planned as part of the Barge Canal expansion and would have been the second reservoir impounding the
waters of Limestone Creek, downstream from the De Ruyter Reservoir.
The dam would have been constructed near where High Bridge Road intersects Route 92. The reservoir would have encompassed a large area, incorporating Snook’s Pond and White Lake. The reservoir would have extended into the Village of Manlius. Suitable bedrock for the dam could not be located, however and plans for the High Bridge Reservoir were shelved until possible expansion.
Unlike its predecessors, the Barge Canal was designed with the prospect of eventual expansion. Evidence of this is found at each lock, where it is located to the left or right of the canal’s centerline, to allow for the addition of another lock at some point in the future.
The reservoirs constructed for the Rome Summit level provided a much-needed supply of water required for the daily use of the canal. It is unlikely that the canals could have brought such prosperity to the state without these reservoirs. In modern times, the primary benefits provided by the reservoirs have apparently been bypassed by the secondary benefits of flood control and the addition of valuable waterfront properties.
The popularity of fishing, swimming, and boating has encouraged the building of public access to these waters, with the construction of parks, docks, and boat launches. The demonstrated design functions of these reservoirs over the period of years since their construction has more than exemplified the importance of their continued maintenance.
Read more about canals in New York State.
Illustrations, from above: Map from the New York State Engineer and Surveyor’s Report to the Legislature 1892 displays the southern reservoirs and their supply path to the Erie Canal; Birds eye view map of Cazenovia, 1890, displaying the State dam on Chittenango Creek which holds the stage elevation of Cazenovia Lake; New York State Engineer & Surveyor’s Report to the Legislature (1862) contains details of the dam being constructed to form DeRuyter Reservoir including the dam cross-section displaying the gatehouse on the downstream slope and the rack and receiver underwater, connected by discharge pipes embedded in masonry and supported by pilings and counterfort walls. Also seen are details of the spillway and discharge valves inside the gatehouse; Delta Dam and Lake, Rome, NY, postcard; View west showing progress on Delta dam, 1910 (NYS Archives); View of Hinckley Dam on West Canada Creek between Trenton, Oneida County, and Russia, Herkimer County, 1921 (NYS Archives).
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