Erie Canal, New York: Where to Stay, Eat and Play

I’m a born and bred New Yorker (BK all day!) and yet my knowledge of the Erie Canal was admittedly limited to the Wikipedia-level basics. However, a nearly weeklong jaunt through Western New York this summer—from Buffalo through Rochester through Syracuse, with a side of Niagara Falls and several -esque small towns in between—gave me not only a deep historical rundown on “The Nation’s First Superhighway” and how it impacted both the growth of New York State and the U.S. as an economic and cultural powerhouse, but also a keen, lively sense of how that past still plays out in the region’s present.

These are the 5 most fascinating secrets about the Erie Canal

If you, too, seemingly dozed off during U.S history, here’s a quick little 101 course: The Erie Canal was the fir