Pilot Cultural Landscape Inventories for the New York State Barge Canal, Erie Canal National Heritage Corridor
Auwaerter J, Curry G, Anson J, Koudelka C, Perez J, Perry A, Zembsch S. 2025. Pilot Cultural Landscape Inventories for the New York State Barge Canal, Erie Canal National Heritage Corridor. Cultural Landscapes Inventory Report. National Park Service, Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation. Boston, Massachusetts
The New York State Barge Canal, built between 1905 and 1918, forms the spine of the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor established by Congress in 2000 to preserve and interpret the important historic, cultural, recreational, educational, scenic, and natural resources that define its distinctive sense of place. The Barge Canal system, designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016, includes 450 miles of navigation channel connecting the Hudson River estuary to Lake Champlain, the Finger Lakes, and the Great Lakes. The Barge Canal is owned by New York State and managed by the New York State Canal Corporation. This study by the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) addressed a need by the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor and its partners to identify, describe, and rank the distinctive landscapes of the New York State Barge Canal as the basis for their protection. While the National Historic Landmark provides thorough documentation on the built structures of the Barge Canal, it did not provide documentation on its overall cultural landscape that includes both the state-owned canal and its setting that encompasses many properties that reflect a range of landscape types, from natural to rural and urban. The ESF study was scoped as a pilot effort to identify appropriate methods for documenting the historic and scenic landscape resources of the Barge Canal system. The study adopted and modified three historic and visual resource inventory methods developed by the National Park Service: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Historic Resource Survey, and Visual Resource Inventory. The study applied each of the three methods to two different types of Barge Canal construction: a land-cut section in Western New York, from Brockport to Hulberton in Monroe and Orleans counties, and a canalized river section in the Mohawk Valley, from St. Johnsville to Sprakers in Montgomery County. The ESF project team inventoried each pilot area through office and field work undertaken in summer 2022, using methods differentiated by level of detail, evaluation criteria, and geographic focus. This report begins with an executive summary that provides an overview of the project purpose and scope, conclusions about the outcome of the pilot study, and recommendations for future landscape inventory work. This is followed by a more detailed description of the three inventory methods, and the data produced under each method in the two pilot areas. Appendices provide sample inventory field forms, maps, and a list of contacts.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Auwaerter, John; Curry, George; Anson, Jack; Koudelka, Chris; Perez, Joseph; Perry, Allison; Zembsch, Siela
- Date of Issue
- 2025
- Publisher
- National Park Service, Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation
- Units
- ERIE
- Keywords
- canal, canalway, cultural landscapes inventory, Erie Canal, linear landscape, National Heritage Area, National Heritage Corridor, New York, Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation, SUNY ESF, vernacular landscape, viewshed preservation
- Subjects
- CRIS-CL: 850226: Historic Vernacular Landscape