, anden by tony mauro published by c-span in cooperation with cq press. formark cases is available eight dollars sunday five cents, plus shipping. $8.95, plus shipping. this year, c-span is touring cities across the country. you're watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. the eureka knell -- the erie canal is really part of an artificial river created to attach the great lakes to the atlantic ocean. so they built a canal from attachedo albany and

to the hudson river and went to new york city. settlements on the frontier. one thing that the canal did was , and made itmp possible to build a larger settlement here. it also allowed for a lot of commerce to take place. we have buildings up and down the south side of the canal that are called double anders. they the storefronts facing the canal and the land. material would be brought in off the boats and things would be to supplyom the land the bottles. it was a very efficient way of carrying on business. that couldeverything be purchased at the time was purchased in syracuse and

carried here by boat from other parts of the world. one thing that comes to mind is hats. they could buy a hat made here or england. what was shipped from here was salt. we had salt springs and a lot of salt was shipped out of here. building waslock constructed in 1903. a fee was assessed for the weight of the cargo. every vote was made at the beginning of the navigation system and each time it carried cargo through the canal. the way that the wheelock work weigh lock way the worked is a fairly it either end of the chamber. closed, thees are

boater is drained, and the settles into a cradle. the cradle attaches to a standard scale, and then it is way -- then it is weighed. once the water reaches parity, the gates are opened and the boat can leave and the next book comes in. they can weigh four boats are our that way. building wask opened in 1850 and the boats were raised -- wade until the state ceased to weigh boats. that,hey ceased to do there were upgrades to the building. converted this half of the

building used as a weigh chamber into another part of an office building. this is where the typists would type up the reports. this went on into the 1950's when the building had become too small and unworkable in the state was able to build, across the street, a new state office building. here workedho work across the street and this was marked for demolition. saw thisooders building and came out and saved it. inn they opened the museum 1962, this was the canal museum. do is to take a

look at what we can do best, and still collaborate with these other. we don't have any water near us. we're the only maritime museum i know without water. but we interpret this building, , and this life and syracuse and beyond that we give a very good introduction to the history of the canal. occurrede things that through the transition of the canal to a more recreational operation and to the cleaning up of the water is that communities began turning back to the canal where they had their backs to it before. it was a dirty, smelly, industrial site.

in the 1970's come a they began to turn back. you would see restaurants popping up and that all sidewalk cafes and it became far more interesting to look at the canal. "upmber of new museums along the way. it started off carrying boats with passengers. be replacedbegan to by boats carrying a great deal of cargo. as the railroads were consolidated and are consolidated through the canal, they began to take some of the uses of the canal away. but the canal was always finding new things to do. with the expansion to the barge canal, we see shipments of all oil, and large vehicles, and other things like that.

thatreally took down freight shipping on the which allowed for oceangoing vessels to go into the great lakes. erie canalnt, the became more of a recreational place, which it is today. a huge tourist attraction. canal made it possible for this country to become rich. it is a living history museum in itself. ,ust the impact of this thing this is the pivotal moment in american history. this is what made america america. >> find out where the c-span's

cities tour is going next online at www.c-span.org. you are watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend, on c-span3. >> this week on lectures in history, robert paulett talks about caribbean sugar and ideas of race and slavery in the 1600s. he focuses on the island of barbados, and argues that the rise of race-based slavery was driven by the desire for profit. island was dedicated almost solely to sugar production, inhabitants had to rely on other colonies for necessities like food and wood. his class is one hour and 10 minutes.