Village of Newark Mayor Jonathan Taylor and the Village Board of Trustees host a ceremonial ribbon cutting to celebrate the opening of the Canal Trail, part of the Empire State Trail system on Thursday morning at the Edgett Street Pedestrian Bridge.
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Canals played a very important part in the rapid and huge economic development of the Finger Lakes in the decades before the Civil War. The Erie Canal was clearly the most important of the canals in New York State. In this edition of Our Finger Lakes History Seneca County Historian Walter Gable describes the history of the inception, construction and expansion of the great canal that spanned from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes.
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