Whitford’s 1905 Map and a List of Canals and Trails

If you go to the home page and look all the way to the right side you will find a Maps button with a drop-down list of maps that we have found over the years. One of the better maps is the 1905 of Canals and Navigable Rivers of the Untied States and Canada. This map was part of the two volume book set titled “Supplement to the Annual Report of the State Engineer and Surveyor of the State of New York,” with the sub-title, “History of the Canal System of the State of New York, Together with Brief Histories of the Canals of the United States and Canada.” Canal folks just call it “Whitford,” as it is the bible of the canal system. We have written about the author, Noble E. Whitford, in previous posts.

The map shows many the canals and river navigations that had been constructed up to 1905, with red numbers that connect back to a overview of canals in Volume 2. One of our “exhibits” for the World Canals Conference in Buffalo will be a large version of the map, and so I wanted to create a handy list that we could refer back to if someone had a question about a certain canal. As I am basically a lazy person, I tried to get ChatGPT to create the list, but only with moderate success. I ended up going through Whitford checking each number anyhow. And, while I was at it, I thought I would add a column about trails that might follow or use the old waterways.

So here is the list as a pdf file. Check it over and let us know what we might have wrong and or missed.