The Cayuga-Seneca Canal (from Cycling Along The Canals of New York State.)
At present, no specifically numbered on-road routes exist, but nearly all the roadways in this part of New York are excellent for cycling with wide shoulders and rolling hills. First, I’ll guide you village-by-village from the junction of the Erie Canal near Montezuma, though Seneca Falls, Waterloo, and to Geneva. Then, for the adventurous long-distance bicyclist, I will describe some trips along the many feeder canals that once extended the reach of the Cayuga-Seneca Canal to Pennsylvania.
Basic on-road tour directions are pretty simple. If you have arrived in the Village of Montezuma on your Erie Canal tour, whether you have come from the east or west, or along Bike “5” (NY 31) or the Canalway Trail, head south on NY 90, a designated NY State Scenic Byway. In about four miles you’ll come to the junction with Route 5 & 20. (Note: To find Cayuga-Seneca Barge Canal Lock 1, you need to take a short dead-end detour. Continue south on NY 90; do not turn at US 20. Lock 1 is about one mile south of the junction.)
Lock 1 raises boats from the level of the Erie Canal to the 384-foot elevation of Cayuga Lake.
To follow the canal to Seneca Falls, Waterloo, and Geneva, turn west on Route 5 & 20. This will take you by the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge main entrance (as noted in the previous chapter, worth stopping at) and in a total of just five miles you’ll arrive right in Seneca Falls. Plan on spending some time here.
The village of Seneca Falls takes its name from a now-vanished sixty-foot waterfall. The original canal required six locks, with lifts ranging from six to ten feet to overcome the waterfall on this site. When the canal was rebuilt, almost a century ago, two larger locks, Cayuga-Seneca Barge Canal Locks 2 and 3, replaced the older, smaller ones, and a large new lake, Van Cleef Lake, was created. Just off the canal, on Fall Street, is the Seneca Museum of Waterways and Industry. The museum has excellent dioramas explaining the complicated canal history here. Indeed, there are three canal alignments and, like the archeology of ancient Troy, they all lie atop one another.
Right in the center of Seneca Falls are The National Women’s Hall of Fame and the Women’s Rights National Historic Park. In the mid-1840s the canals of New York were the nation’s primary arteries of information as well as commerce. The modern thinking that flowed along the canal’s waters had a lot to do with energizing the women’s rights movement. Across the canal, nearby, is the 1847 home of Elizabeth Cady Stanton who was a driving force in the women’s rights movement for fifty years. Anyone interested in women’s history should spend a day in Seneca Falls.
One of the many shops in Seneca Falls.
There is a close linkage between the National Women’s Suffrage movement based in Central New York and Haudenosaunee sites. Only Haudenosaunee women could vote for tribal chiefs; men could not vote. The fact that this was going on so close by was an important impetus to the suffragettes. Not too far away are the chief sites of the historic Cayuga and Seneca tribes. The principal Cayuga home was located near the village of Union Springs, on NY 90, about five miles directly south of the junction between NY 90 and US 20. Not much remains here. A bit further west (described in the following chapter) lies the site of the prime Seneca village, Ganondagan. This is an important historic site open to the public.