Summary

Preserved in the journals, notes and scraps of paper created by the survey party, this remains one of the most significant expeditions in New York State history.

The expedition of 1792 may seem small in scale by today's standards. It involved a 30 foot long boat driven upriver by 3 young boatmen, and occupied by 6 people representing what was soon to become New York's first canal company. During the fourteen days that transpired before this boat once again tied up at the waterfront on the Binnekill, a detailed survey of the Mohawk River had been completed and the lives of perhaps all nine of the participants affected in ways we can imagine, but cannot fully discover.

But more than that, this expedition changed the cultural landscape of New York, and the Nation, for decades to come. The building of the great Erie Canal, the Champlain Canal, the numerous lateral canals that spread across the State during the 1820s and 30s, and the canal age that continues to this day, all had their roots in that tiny boat and those nine men who crowded into it on a warm afternoon in August, 200 years ago.