THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610050029
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY GREG RAVER-LAMPMAN, TRAVEL CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: 242 lines
WHEN TEXAS entrepreneur Michael Wheeler retired, he and his wife, Teresa, wanted to try something ``exciting, interesting and different.''
An avid sailor, Wheeler wanted to start a new business involving boats. He pored through business and boating publications, trying to figure out if he could make money renting yachts in the Caribbean.
Most everything he investigated involved a lot of competition. Then somebody suggested a ludicrous-sounding idea: Why not rent boats on the Erie Canal?
``Being a Texan,'' recalls Wheeler, ``that was the furthest thing from my mind.''
But after touring the area, Wheeler discovered an Erie Canal far different from the memories he took away from articles in the Weekly Reader when he was growing up. Or from the more recent horrific tales of such widespread pollution, including one story about an Ohio river that actually caught fire.
What Wheeler discovered were lakes and rivers reborn and an enormous network of picturesque canals surrounded by farmlands, mountains and villages untouched by time.
Wheeler built and launched a three-boat fleet of Erie Canal Cruisers. After almost a year in operation, he has come to be one of the canal's most vocal boosters.
``I expected sarcastic, ruthless, coarse, rude people,'' said Wheeler, a beefy, bushy-haired former U.S. Marine. ``I got just the opposite. I expected a filthy, crime-ridden part of the country. I got just the opposite.
``I would say my only disappointment is that I ordered six boats and got only three.''
Indeed, Wheeler may be on the cutting edge of the rediscovery of a 170-year-old canal that transformed New York and has just recently begun to intrigue entrepreneurs from as far away as London.
Forbes Magazine recently extolled the Erie Canal as a vacation spot. USA Today did a recent story on canal cruises.
The oldest canal cruise line in New York, Mid-Lakes Navigation, now plans to sell canal boats to other cruise operators. New York Gov. George Pataki, in an uncharacteristic loosening of purse strings, plans to spend more than $150 million sprucing up parks, locks and drawbridges.
Andrew Hanke, whose 27-year-old Crown Blue Lines has hundreds of self-skippered boats in France, Holland and Ireland, is considering putting as many as 50 on the Erie Canal.
``How on earth it's remained a secret, it's hard to tell,'' Hanke said.
Wheeler agrees. After opening his Erie Canal Cruise Lines, he's had ``reservations from all over the damn place,'' he said. ``I predict in 10 years, going for a cruise on the Erie Canal will be a must. If you haven't done it, you'll be a nobody. It'll be like, `You haven't been to Aspen?' ''
Although few people have visited the Erie Canal, virtually every American has heard of it. When I mentioned I was going to the Erie Canal, many friends began singing snatches of a half-forgotten song:
``I've got a mule, and her name is Sal
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal. . . .''
The canal has become the stuff of legend.
That's as it should be. If nothing else, the canal deserves to be remembered as one of this country's most magnificent engineering feats.
The Erie Canal was the brainchild of a New York politician, De Witt Clinton. The idea was often derided as ``Clinton's ditch'' or ``Clinton's folly.'' In 1809, then-President Thomas Jefferson was approached about a 363-mile line man-made canal connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. Visionary that he was, Jefferson dissed the notion. Intriguing, he told canal backers, but ``a little short of madness to think of it at this day.''
Not a red cent of federal money would back such madness.
When Clinton (no relation to Bill) assumed the New York governorship in 1917, he ordered the canal dug, without federal help.
The ditch diggers and designers were largely unschooled Irish immigrants, rationed a quart of whiskey a day. One apocryphal legend claims the whiskey was placed at the end of a quarter mile. As soon as the diggers could reach the whiskey they were done for the day.
But the diggers did more than shovel dirt. They solved daunting logistical problems on the fly, often acting more like engineers than hard laborers. Not far from Medina, the canal passed over a river gorge. The workers made a 70-foot-tall mound and carved the 4-foot-deep canal in the top. In other places, they built gigantic aqueducts, essentially bridges filled with water, so barges could pass from one hilltop to another.
They also had to contend with the fact that the Great Lakes, where the canal would end, was almost 600 feet above sea level. If they had just dug a ditch, water would have flowed downhill far too fast for mule-drawn barges.
So they build 83 locks, enormous rectangular basins at each end. Barges going upstream would enter these basins. Doors on both ends would close. Water would fill up the basin, just like you fill a swimming pool, only far faster, millions of gallons in just a few minutes. Boats would rise, as if they'd taken an elevator, and leave through the upstream door.
Boats going downstream would enter the same basin, water would flood out, and they'd leave from the downstream door. These locks ran across the entire state of New York, transforming the canal into a vast string of stair steps.
They hacked out a path for mules who would tow the barges on the 363-mile voyage from the Hudson River to Buffalo, and even planted apple trees so the mules could munch along the way.
They finished the canal in eight years, at a total cost of $7.7 million.
When Wheeler first came to New York and surveyed their handiwork, he was stunned. ``It sends shivers up your spine,'' he said. ``It makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up to know how hard these people worked.''
The Erie Canal was also one of the world's most successful economic development ventures. At the time, New York City had the best workers in the world, and could make anything faster and cheaper than anyone in America, but how could they get to the customers? How could they get the raw materials they needed?
The Northwest Territories were rich in timber, minerals and fertile land for farming. To reach them, however, demanded weeks of bone-jarring travel on rock-hard roads that dissolved into mud each spring. When the canal opened, shipping costs dropped by more than 90 percent, from $100 per ton to just $10 per ton. As Clinton predicted, the canal made New York one of the world's richest harbors, and transformed Manhattan from farmland into a international metropolis.
The Erie Canal was like an artery pumping blood into a flooding a sclerotic heart.
``The Erie Canal made us the Empire state,'' said Patrick Garvey, who works for the state of New York to woo canal-related enterprises.
The Erie Canal also fueled the 19th century westward expansion of the United States. Pioneers flooded west on the canal, creating instant boom towns like Rochester and Buffalo. It also created a population boom in territories that later became Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio.
Transformed, too, were quiet villages that lined the waterway. Being on the Erie Canal was the 19th century equivalent of suburb getting a big city metro stop. The canal didn't just run through these villages, the canal became their lifeblood. Nearby farms shipped goods to these villages to be loaded onto barges. Inns, supply stores, bars, warehouses and chandlers clustered near canal stops.
The canal, and others built in New York and elsewhere, had a good run, more than 100 years. But with the 20th century came railroads, trucking, and finally, in 1959, the St. Lawrence Seaway, a stake in the heart of the Erie Canal.
The Erie Canal was all but abandoned, largely relegated to history classes, folk songs and an occasional rusty barge.
Until recently, when an ornery, eccentric dinner cruise operator began to make a god-awful ruckus about how the canal's historical and cultural value.
Peter Wiles Sr., who also ran restaurants and designed golf courses, ran dinner cruises on the canal out of Syracuse, and occasionally took about 40 tourists for a two- or three-day canal cruises, stopping at inns along the way.
Ten years back, Wiles visited England and saw the boats cruising the canals there. He returned and built a fleet of six narrow, low-slung boats he dubbed ``Lockmasters.'' Tourists could rent the boats out for three days to a week at a time.
``Wiles became the grand old man of the canal system,'' said Garvey.
With his shock of white hair, captain's hat and beard, Wiles ``was like a reincarnation of the personalities that were the canal in the 19th century,'' Garvey added. ``You just couldn't avoid him. He wouldn't let you. . . .
``He was, as the current generation would say, `in your face,' but with a great deal of charm. He was one of the clear voices that could see what a tremendous historical and cultural resource this was.''
While others might have wanted to thwart competition, Wiles courted all comers. It was Wiles who convinced Wheeler to move from Texas to New York. Wiles who helped convinced New Yorkers that the Erie Canal was worth saving, and developing. Wiles was ``a visionary when it came to the fact that the canals were underutilized,'' Wheeler said.
Wiles and Wheeler never saw themselves as competitors. Using the basic profile of Mid-Lakes' Lockmasters, Wheeler designed his own fleet, making them wider and roomier, with full-sized beds and expanded bathrooms. Mid-Lakes built the boats for him.
Last July, just as Wheeler was getting his business underway, Wiles died in his sleep. He was 67.
For Wheeler, the death was a blow. He lost not only a friend, but a shrewd mentor.
Still, Wheeler has no intention of giving up.
He compares his commitment to a Denny's grand-slam breakfast with eggs and bacon. ``I'm committed like the pig, not the chicken.''
As he talks, he stands at the helm of one of his three cruisers, the Fair Dinkum, marveling at the surrounding beauty. The Erie Canal cuts through some of the most remote areas of New York, with stops in small hamlets without hotels, where residents come out to greet you.
In some towns, drawbridges are so close together that an operator raises one, lowers it, then sprints to the other one. You can hear them panting as they radio that the second bridge will be coming up. In many places, if you stop, they'll invite you into their towers.
Evenings are especially glorious on the canal. As evening falls in tiny towns along the canal, you can cook up your dinner and take nighttime walks through villages where 19th century mansions bespeak a time when the canal boomed.
Stopping in these communities is like stepping back into the 1950s.
One night, as we were leaving the boat lashed to a bulkhead at the tiny village of Spencerport, I became concerned that two expensive bicycles on the bow might be ripped off. A lock tender, who had just opened the bridge, came over to greet us. I asked whether I should lock up the bikes.
No need to worry, he assured me.
``We haven't had any kind of vandalism since I moved here,'' he said, ``and I've been here four years.''
Besides, he assured me, he'd be watching from his tower. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
GREG RAVER-LAMPMAN
Rent a boat and travel the historic, picturesque Erie Canal.
Graphics
BUY A 10-DAY LEG ON INTRACOASTAL WATERWAY CRUISE FROM NORFOLK
Michael Wheeler, above, is banking that the Intracoastal Waterway
can draw just as many tourists as his venture on the Erie Canal.
Wheeler's red-white-and-blue canal cruisers will be coming to
Virginia next week to begin a 60-day trip from Norfolk to Orlando.
Tourists can buy 10-day legs. As on the Erie Canal, stopping points
will be out-of-the way towns like Jacksonville, N.C.; Georgetown,
S.C.; and St. Augustine, Fla.
The Erie Canal Cruisers, outfitted with all the accouterments of
a luxury hotel, can easily sleep six. Info: (800) 962-1771.
Although Wheeler will be cruising the Intracoastal Waterway for
the first time, he's convinced that tourists will snap up the
opportunity to go aboard. He calls it a ``fantastic voyage,'' taking
the boats to Florida and back in 120 days.
- Greg Raver-Lampman
TRAVELER'S ADVISORY: ERIE CANAL
Getting there: People who want to visit the Erie Canal can fly
into Rochester, N.Y. Driving to the canal area takes between 10 and
12 hours from South Hampton Roads, less time then you would spend
driving to the western reaches of Virginia.
The best route to take is U.S. 13 up the Eastern Shore, then up
Interstate 81 all the way to the New York Turnpike, Interstate 90.
There are a couple confusing turns, but AAA can sketch them out for
you. The route straight up from Washington, D.C., may look shorter,
but it takes more time.
Who to call: Mid-Lakes Navigation, the company created by Peter
Wiles Sr., remains the largest on the canal and is run by his sons
and daughters. They not only rent self-piloted canal boats but they
also have cruises in Lake Skaneateles and out of Syracuse. Prices
for Mid-Lakes Lockmasters vary depending on the size of the boat,
with the starting price about $1,300 a week for a 33-footer. Info:
(800) 545-4318.
Erie Canal Cruise lines, operated by Michael and Teresa Wheeler,
has three Erie Canal boats, designed like those of the Mid-Lakes
boats, but slightly wider, with all the accouterments of a luxury
hotel. They are booking Erie Canal Cruises for next year. Prices
vary according to season and length of trip, starting from $1,395
for a three-night, four-day trip. The Erie Canal Cruisers can easily
sleep six. Info: (800) 962-1771.
Photo
GREG RAVER-LAMPMAN
The rediscovery of the 170-year-old canal that transformed New York
is intriguing entrepreneurs.
KEYWORDS: ERIE CANAL by CNB