Oneida Lake - Navigable Waterways and The Oneida Canals

Navigable Waterways and The Oneida Canals

During the 18th and early 19th centuries Oneida Lake and its tributary Wood Creek were part of the Albany-Oswego waterway from the Atlantic seaboard westward via the Hudson River and through the Appalachian Mountains via the Mohawk River; travel westward then was by portage over the Oneida Carry to the Wood Creek-Oneida Lake system. The navigable waterway then exited Oneida Lake by the Oneida River, which led to the Oswego River and the Great Lakes via Lake Ontario.

Following the American Revolutionary War, the rapidly increasing settlement of European-Americans in central and western New York forced the Iroquois nations to cede most of their lands in that region. White settlers improved the natural waterway by constructing a canal with locks within Wood Creek to Oneida Lake. This system was significantly improved—from 1792 to 1803—by cutting a canal across the Oneida Carry, after which commercial shipping across Oneida Lake increased substantially. However, this progress was mere prelude to completion, in 1825, of the Erie Canal, which bypassed the Oneida Lake system, causing the population around the lake to lose their navigable waterway eastward.

In 1835 Oneida Lake was connected to the Erie Canal system by construction of the (old) Oneida Canal, which ran about 4.5 miles from Higginsville on the Erie Canal northward to Wood Creek, about 2 miles upstream of Oneida Lake. Built poorly with wooden locks, the Oneida Canal was closed in 1863.

When the Erie Canal was redesigned and reconstructed to form the New York State Barge Canal in the early 20th century, the engineers made use of natural rivers and lakes where possible. The new barges were powered internally (by diesel or steam engines), so they could travel open water and against a current and the system no longer needed infrastructure for drawing vessels externally—i.e., drawpaths and draft animals. After it straightened Fish Creek on the east the new canalway entered Oneida Lake at Sylvan Beach and exited west with the Oneida River at Brewerton. New terminal walls at Sylvan Beach, Cleveland, and Brewerton allowed barges to load and unload cargo and to stay overnight, and a new break wall was installed, preventing lake waves from entering the canal and protecting against shoaling. Now towns along the shoreline of Oneida Lake again had access to navigable waterways east and west.