Join us for a fun 60+/- mile adventure and discover the stories behind the Byway, the waterway west, the Erie Canal, and the role our communities played in the westward expansion of the country. When? Sunday, April 14, 2024 9:00 AM Registration 9:50 AM Driver/Navigator Meeting 10:05 AM First car off 1:00 PM Light lunch social and awards
Where? (Start) Historic Grooms Tavern Corner of Grooms Road and Sugar Hill Road Rexford, N Y 12065
Who? All are welcome. At least one person in each vehicle (team) must be a SCCA member. Temporary memberships are available for an additional $15.
Additional information: Teams will need the following: – Camera with digital display – Internet access – GPS unit …or a smart phone / tablet with these capabilities
Three hours of fun in three Capital District counties searching for canal sites as we celebrate 200 years of the Erie Canal. Look for and discover this amazing engineering feat that made New York the Empire State.
The event was a 250th Anniversary Commemoration of the Raising of the Second Liberty Pole in Schenectady on Friday, January 12 at noon. Compared to a brisk winter day 250 years ago, the day turned out to be a rather pleasant, sunny mid-winter day with temperatures in the mid forties. A reenactment of the mob of individuals dressed in period clothing to raise a pole with a “Liberty” flag created a memorable event.
Re-enactors carry the Liberty Flag and pole toward Church and Union Streets in Schenectady’s historic Stockade.
The challenge of the day was to have individual participants and spectators come up with a definition of liberty?
Liberty; freedom from oppression; are concepts that come to mind.
With liberty comes the responsibility to be conscious of the rights of others and not infringe on others rights to liberty and freedom. What is the role of “peace keepers” and the need for laws to define the limits of liberty? The bill of rights was perhaps the first of these laws that provide the underpinning of our liberty and freedoms.
Once erected the flag appeared rather lifeless on a gorgeous, relatively warm mid-winter afternoon. First Reformed Church frames the background with fair weather clouds. The weather was quite pleasant compared to the blustery conditions on January 12, 1774.
Many thanks to the Schenectady County Historical Society and others who organized a first of a large number of local, regional and national celebrations from the Bicentennial of the Erie Canal to the semiquincentennial of the founding of the United States of America.
A crew of three Mohawk Towpath Byway volunteers participated in a Mohawk-Hudson Region Sports Car Club of America road rally to gain experience with this type of event. Is it practical for us to do a road rally next spring to feature the Mohawk Towpath Scenic Byway. The rally we participated in this weekend was a game, tour, and adventure (GTA) that started in Halfmoon and ended in Bennington, Vermont, to pay homage to our veterans.
It was fun as a game since we were pitted against 17 other teams to accumulate up to as many as 3,600 points for various finds along the way. For example:
…we earned 27 points for finding this bell from the SS Saratoga
… and 300 points for this checkpoint at the Bennington Battlefield!
It was a tour since we went on some local and less used state roads through rural agricultural areas. How many covered bridges are there in Washington County? Each was worth 40 points!
It was an adventure to go places we were unfamiliar with and learn about some of the history that forged our nation.
Could we do this on the Byway? You can safely bet on it! Plan to join us with a minimum team consisting of a driver and a navigator, but you can fill your vehicle with others to round out a winning team on the Mohawk Towpath Byway April 14, 2024.
These photographs were taken by our team’s navigator Jeff Slater.
Our major annual fundraiser is on Sunday morning October 15 with an 8:30 AM start. Competitors complete a two mile run, twelve mile bike, and a two mile run to the finish. This is a great multi-sport event for first timers as well as a neat way to end the season for experienced athletes. Register now before the price goes up again!
The next meeting of the Friends of the Mohawk Towpath Scenic Byway will be Sept 12 at Schenectady Distilling Company, 3304 Amsterdam Road, Glenville. This will be a tasting open to the public. We supply the Erie Canal related presentation, drum up an attendance of forty people, and they will provide a tasting of their products.
This will be a pleasant, relaxed departure from our usual meetings which tend to be totally focused on the Byway; the Erie Canal; and the waterway west. I plan on bringing a power point type presentation (lots of images) of the “State of the Byway”.
This is a kick-off of our public availability sessions on the draft Corridor Management Plan (CMP). Sure it is a bit different than any other Byway has done it, but why not? The “State of the Byway” summarizes sections 1, 2, and 3 of the CMP. I will add a slide or two to show where the nearest Erie Canal features are to the Distillery (which features “36 Locks beverages”). Here’s an approximate schedule of what we have planned:
4 to 5 PM – Tour of the distillery and tasting
5 to 8 PM – hors d’oeuvres
6 to 7 PM – Byway Presentation, questions, discussion, answers
From a historic perspective alcohol played an important part in building the Erie Canal. Treated municipal water, that we take for granted, was not available. In the spirit of building public acceptance of our Byway plan, let’s relax and enjoy each other’s company as exhausted canal workers must have ended the day of moving mud and stumps to make way for what is now history?
Note that attendees are expected to make a $5 donation to the Byway on entry. Non-alcoholic beverages will be available for us tea-toddlers who are encouraged to provide car pool or rides for others!
(As published in the National Scenic Byway Foundation e-newsletter.)
As an ambassador for our Byway, the most common and often used technique is my elevator speech. It takes about ten seconds to say, “The Mohawk Towpath Byway is a driving route between Waterford and Cohoes and Schenectady here in New York that follows the historic route of the Erie Canal and the waterway west.”
It is an attention grabber. The first few lines of our website, an introduction to an indoor lecture, outdoor wayside tour, or the first lines on a bus tour. It is much better than saying, “Test. Test. Is this mic on?”
What the visitor to your byway is going to remember is this personal contact and this first impression. Make it a good one. Smile, be sincere, enthuse with body language that adds to the feeling of authenticity. Be ready for the follow-up question like, “Is it a bike path?” Or “What’s the story here?” Or “Where’s the nearest public restroom?” Or “Do you have a map?”
Tour host and historian John Scherer narrates a story on the Mohawk Towpath Byway. Note his leaning into the audience, gesture, and enthusiasm that all add to the authenticity of the story. [ Note that John is also holding the book he authored, Images of America: Clifton Park. Tell me that doesn’t add to the authenticity!]
What is your byway elevator speech? Can you say it in your sleep?
For help with your elevator speech visit Storytelling in Person, a factsheet in our NSBF Resource Library.
Close to Arbor Day my mind goes to an old farmer’s sage prognosis:
If the oak is out before the ash
’Twill be a summer of wet and splash
If the ash is out before the oak
‘Twill be a summer of fire and smoke.
This retired farm boy living in this Mohawk Towpath Scenic Byway community is saying we are in for a wet summer, because the Oaks have leaves on them, they may be little leaves! The Ash, however, have buds only open enough to recognize the compound leaf structure inside.
Make your own observation on your end of the Byway and let me know if you see something different!
Our number one, top priority within the Mohawk Towpath National Scenic Byway corridor is to provide a positive visitor experience, period.
But how do we measure or quantify our successes? The designated route is along public roads that are open 24/7/365! Most of our historic features are along public highways or in, or along side the right-of-way. One such measure would be the number of hits on our website. That’s a start, but that’s only the visitors to our website. Intuitively visits to our website would reflect early curiosity or the number of people searching for a unique experience, not physical visits to the Byway. When we first set up the Byway’s website one of the concerns was that if we included too much information, too many pictures that would provide the whole experience and no one would try the real, authentic, visit.
I disagree. The more we can provide pictures of people enjoying the Byway and its many features the more we inspire the public to gain their own experience by physically visiting the Byway. My feeling is that use of our cell phone based self-guided tour is one of the best metrics of Byway visitation and experience.
Gathering information on visitors, not personal information, but number of calls to the self-guided tour are most helpful. Also the number of brochures that are picked up at various Byway locations are revealing.
Data provided by OnCell Systems, now STQRY.
The above data shows that visits almost doubled during the pandemic. People, including you and I, needed to get out of the house, but go where they were not exposed to others. A drive on the Mohawk Towpath Byway or visit one of our parks or historic sites was the perfect answer. Recent numbers are back, but not down to pre-COVID numbers. Perhaps return visits to the Byway and a greater digital marketing effort are definitely playing a role.
Also note that visitors don’t spend a lot of time on the page or listening to the entire narrative. If it is longer than 2 minutes they are gone to the next or are otherwise distracted.
For those of you who have used the self-guided tour service before, we will be adding new sites, new STOPs this spring along Erie Blvd. in Schenectady and in downtown Cohoes.
There was a focused digital marketing program for the Mohawk Towpath Byway this past summer that was a great success.
Starting in early July a program of relentless, persistent postings were made three times a week on
Each of these posts were page tagged and hash tagged. We piggy backed on other events posted by Albany County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau (ACCVB), Discover Schenectady, and Discover Saratoga. These were in addition to postings that Byway volunteers occasional made and secondary postings on volunteer’s websites. The point was to increase hits on the Byway website and encourage down loads of our two detailed itineraries: one that started with a visit to Saratoga Return to Another Century or one for those arriving in the area by AMTRAKJourney to Another Place in Time.
The results were dramatic.
Prior to the July 1 the peak number of hits on our website was 2,000 on May 28 (the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend) after the marketing started weekly peaks occurred at 6,000 for the rest of the summer! Did that result in economic benefit to our community? I talked to Isabel Prescott (owner of Riverview Orchards) to determine if she saw any increase is traffic. Her response was that her sales increase every year. This year price increases were a part of that, but they seem to be getting more customers from out of the area. We had a record number of participants for the Duathlon, double last year’s attendance.
We need to continue these marketing efforts so we do not lose momentum.
The digital marketing program was funded by a grant from the Albany County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau (ACCVB) and implemented by the National Travel Center of Lancaster, PA.
The year 2025 will mark the 200th Anniversary of the opening of the Erie Canal. Many events are being planned for 2025 between Albany and Buffalo and beyond to celebrate the canal’s completion. Declared the eighth Wonder of the World by many at the time, this gem sites in your very own back yard. But you don’t have to wait until 2025 to enjoy tours and shows.
A free, self-guided tour already exists called the Mohawk Towpath Scenic Byway. The Byway is a federally recognized, 26 mile drive between Waterford and Schenectady showcasing sites and sounds and a wide variety of activities.
If you have never seen the 70 foot high Cohoes Falls, go look at it after a really good rain storm. Follow the Mohawk River down to the junction with the Hudson River in Waterford. There see the remains of the Champlain Canal which was completed in 1822, before the Erie Canal. Then check out the Waterford flight – five locks lifting the Barge Canal 169 feet in just 1 1/2 miles to circumvent the Cohoes Falls. Above the falls, head north to Crescent and cross the Mohawk River on the Route 9 bridge. At this very spot, the Erie Canal crossed the Mohawk River on a huge 1,137 foot long stone bridge with 26 spans—the longest aqueduct on the entire canal system. For the next 13 miles to the west, the Erie Canal hugs the Mohawk’s shore through southern Saratoga County. Here along the Byway you can discover a preserved lock, a Whipple Truss bridge, three ferry landings pre-dating the canal, a birding sanctuary and several nature preseryes, plus places to fish or launch canoes and kayaks. There are plenty of opportunities to park your car and walk miles of trails. Some are along the shore of the barge canal; some are, in fact, on the original towpaths of the Ditch and Enlarged Canal still filled with water. Drive through the village of Vischer Ferry with its beautifully maintained canal-era homes and quaint general store. Then cross back over the Mohawk River on Route 146 at the canal town of Rexford. The Rexford Bridge is in the same spot where a second stone aqueduct carried the Erie Canal back to the south side of the Mohawk. After crossing the bridge, from a park just east of the traffic circle, you can see a few remains of the 14 original stone spans of the 610 foot aqueduct. Following Aqueduct Road to the west will bring you to Erie Boulevard in downtown Schenectady. This wide road is actually the canal filled in and paved over.
Special road signs mark the entire Byway route; maps and information available at mohawktowpath.org show the more than 30 designated stops where you can listen to audio descriptions of the history that happened here.
What are you waiting for? Let’s celebrate the opening of the Erie Canal now!
[This article by Nancy Papish first appeared in the ECOS Newsletter and is used here by permission. The Photograph is of lock 22 c. 1880 with Rexford in the background and the Upper Aqueduct across the Mohawk River to the left. Compare this photograph with the present day image used on the home page.]
Friends of the Mohawk Towpath Byway 