If you drove on the Thruway in Central New York on Tuesday, no, your eyes were not playing tricks on you. That was a full-scale replica canal boat being hauled by a large flat-bed truck from the Seneca River to its new home, the Old Erie Canal Heritage Park in Port Byron.
The historic replica, Lois McClure, was built in 2004 at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vergennes, Vermont, and was constructed from designs based on documentation of 1860s-era canal boats found on the bottom of Lake Champlain. The McClure is typical of vessels that traveled through the Park’s historic Erie Canal lock in the decades after its 1853 completion.
Before being retired by the Maritime Museum earlier this year, the McClure had served as a touring educational platform on the New York State Canal System and adjoining waterways for nearly 20 years and had visited communities from Lake Champlain to New York Harbor to the Finger Lakes and Western New York.
