Chittenango Landing Canal Boat Museum — Attraction in Town of Sullivan

I feel an afternoon nap slipping up to greet me. I would gladly succumb to it, but I am a guest of history this early afternoon. Chittenango recovered the landing where canal boats paused for repairs and canal boats were constructed. The attendant collected a six dollar admission and reminded me of the four in the afternoon closing time. I would have preferred to visit this site when a blacksmith and a team of ship wrights kept this site busy and full of life all hours of the night. A pair of cyclists from Australia signed in to the registrar. Other than that, the only life passes by on the far side of the canal on bicycles and by foot. History might not be the draw that once it was back in the days of station wagons. Parents might bring their kids by the wagon load to make sure they were properly exposed to history. Not this afternoon. Maybe the ghosts of the past are watching Fox sports on TV. Could we celebrate history by placing a brew pub on this spot. Make the brewer promise to use old recipes and techniques. Now that's history to toast with a lift of a stein.

I am now a historical actor. I caught twenty minutes of peaceful snooze of the deck of a barn that once serviced the canal boats. Although I think the current barn is a reproduction built to historical prints, drafted by reference to Dauggerotypes and tin types of the previous building. The site must have fallen into quite a state of disrepair. A canal boat that moored on this canal wall now lies in ruins below the water line. Which I believe means it was burnt to the waterline. Which probably meant that a person considered the Marcellus, a guess as to name, an eyesore and burnt it to the waterline, maybe with the help of fuel and a cargo hold stuffed with straw. Plenty of good ships were put to the torch after years of good service. I can think of two such wrecks below the waters of the Grand River near Grand Haven. One famous ship filled with flammable materials and even gunpowder went up in flames on the waterfront in Toronto. Refreshments and souvenirs sold, pictures published in local papers, I wish I could remember the good ship's name. This might be here the ruins of the Sadie Hughes or the W. H. Marcellus, both owned by Mr. I. J. Laning of Chittenango. Stephen Coulthart somehow got down into the marl and sketched the remains, the detailed drawing now on display along the dock. I'm sure Coulthart despised what time and weather and maybe human stupidity had done to...

It's a fun place for a short stop. If I was in the area I'd swing by for a look but I wouldn't go far out of my way for it. They have a nice little building but all the action is outside. They've got sort of a exploded view of a full size walk through canal boat. Finally you can get a feeling what it was like to be on a canal boat.

The site was a boat yard when the canal was functioning so it has dry docks, a lumber mill, blacksmith shop and a store like building. You can go in all of them and read the interpretive materials and maybe talk with a blacksmith like we did. Did you know it took 2,000 nails trip build a canal boat and every one of them was hand made by a blacksmith?

A nice few minutes walk before...

The name of the museum is a bit misleading. There are no boats at this museum, with the exception of a replica canal boat cut into sections for easier access. However the museum is changing its name to better suite what the museum offers. What the museum does have is a good look at what a dry dock complex would have looked like during the canal's heyday. This area would have been a repair shop for boats on the canal and was the closet thing to a Firestone they would've had at the time. The museum has well preserved dry docks and remnants of a boarding house (where the dock workers would've live). It is also close to an Eire Canal walking/biking trail. $10 general admission fee for the...