Lockport Industrial District

Along the north side of the Erie Canal in Lockport, this 20-acre district brings together the canal's famous double flight of locks and the remains of the industries that grew up beside them. The original ten combined locks of 1825 lifted boats sixty feet over the Niagara escarpment. The 1859 northern flight of five masonry locks survives, though its gates are gone, while two concrete lift locks from 1909-18 now carry traffic. A hydraulic raceway tunnel, cut through solid rock beginning in 1856, once supplied water power to mills along the canal. Those mills included the Holly Manufacturing Company, founded by inventor Birdsill Holly, which made pumps, sewing machines, boxes and ironware. Most of the factories were abandoned or burned by 1909, leaving ruins and foundations plus the stone Bickford Box building. The district was listed for showing how canal transportation and water power built Lockport's economy during the nineteenth century.