Watch Little Ditch The Black River Canal

Fire, flood, politics and corruption: the trials and elation of the engineering marvel that let boats sail over a mountain and move the raw materials that helped build the Empire State. Broadcast nationally on the Documentary Channel and PBS stations throughout New York. For the people of Lewis, northern Oneida and Jefferson Counties The Black River Canal was the main street through the area for 70 years and spurred the development of the western Adirondack region. Sand from Boonville went into the bricks and glass that built Albany and Brooklyn. The salt fires in Syracuse were fed by Lewis County hemlock and Black River Valley cobblestone lined the streets of Buffalo and Rochester. The wharfs of New York City were made from Forestport trees and even boatloads of ice cut from area ponds and lakes found their way to the city. In a ditch-digging frenzy that followed the opening of the Erie Canal, a number of lateral or tributary canals were dug in an effort to spread the wealth throughout New York State. One of those was the Black River Canal; running from Rome, where it met the Erie, uphill to Boonville and on to Carthage, between the Adirondacks and Tug Hill. The film is narrated by author Michael Doyle whose book Forestport Breaks gives us a look into a series of incidents that exposed the corruption that seemed to run rampant in upgrading and maintaining the Erie Canal system. He is currently a reporter with the Washington D.C. Bureau of the McClatchy Newspaper Group. He holds a Masters in Law from Yale and has considerable media experience, including C-SPAN and other radio and television stations nationally. It was a slower, simpler time but it was also brutal and demanding. When roads in northern New York were just rutted wagon trails the canal was a 19th century superhighway that opened up business and trade for the remote area. Stores, hotels and towns sprang up around the comings and goings of the canal barges.

Little Ditch The Black River Canal is a adventure movie with a runtime of 1 hour and 29 minutes.