Lockport Locks — Flight of Five
Lockport, Niagara County, New York
Marker Inscription
Here the Erie Canal climbed the Niagara Escarpment by a double set of five stair-step locks, completed 1825. The 'Flight of Five' was an engineering marvel of the early republic.
Erected by New York State Canal Corporation
The Story
To lift canal boats 60 feet over the Niagara Escarpment, engineers built five paired locks — boats going up on one side while others descended. The project drew workers from across Europe and gave the city of Lockport its name.
Why it matters
The Erie Canal turned New York into the Empire State and opened the Midwest to settlement. The Flight of Five is its most dramatic surviving feat of engineering.
Related events
- · Erie Canal
- · Westward Expansion
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Cobblestone Society Museum
Childs (Gaines), NY · est. 1993
After the Erie Canal opened in 1825, the masons who had cut its locks turned to building homes, churches, and schools from glacial cobblestones. The Childs cluster is the densest surviving example of the craft.
Alexander Classical School
Alexander, NY · est. 2004
Erected in 1837, this cobblestone building served the village of Alexander as a classical academy at a time when secondary education was rare in rural America. Cobblestone construction — laying tens of thousands of water-rounded stones by hand — flourished in a roughly 65-mile radius of Rochester, NY, after Erie Canal masons settled the region.
Lowell Textile Mills
Lowell, MA · est. 1978
Lowell harnessed the Merrimack's drop through a network of power canals to run the nation's first integrated cotton mills. Its young women workers — the 'Lowell mill girls' — wrote the first chapters of American labor history.
Wesleyan Chapel — Seneca Falls
Seneca Falls, NY · est. 1980
Organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, the 1848 convention at the Wesleyan Chapel launched the organized women's suffrage movement. Sixty-eight women and thirty-two men signed the Declaration of Sentiments.