self-published, 2005 $9.99

Buffalonian Steve Corbett has given us a most useful field guide to the original extension of the Erie Canal that brought the waterway to downtown Buffalo. His well-illustrated book takes us from the end of the current canal at the federal lock near the International Railroad Bridge all the way down to Lackawanna. Replaced now by the I-190 and all kinds of additional construction, remnants of the old canal are still to be found and Corbett has located and reproduced many of them. Superimposed on old maps and photographs of the area, this book’s pages show what little remains of the old canal. Some bridge footings, some dilapidated engineering works, some low areas near the expressway, some old stone walls and even a few buildings are still extant to honor that remarkable achievement—DeWitt Clinton’s Ditch—completed in 1825. This brochure supplements the histories of the canal that tell of the intense political infighting between Black Rock and Buffalo for the canal terminus. Black Rock finally won that battle by default when the Buffalo section of the canal was deserted after almost a century in the early 1900s and the I-190 mostly obliterated the rest after another hundred years. But that did not prevent Buffalo from over that period becoming one of the major cities of this nation with Black Rock reduced to a hard-to-find city neighborhood. I salute Steve Corbett for his delightful self-published book now available in local bookstores, at the Buffalo Historical Society and on Amazon.com.