Took a drive into Lockport this morning to check out Lockport cave.
It’s not a natural cave but rather an invention that was dreamed up by
Birdsill Holly, the guy who invented, amongst other things, the fire
hydrant. He wanted to use waterpower to manufacture his many
inventions and so he had the 1600-foot tunnel blasted out of solid
rock so that he could harness the power of the water from the Erie
Canal. His factories ran on nothing but waterpower, no gas or
electricity; he was a pretty ingenious guy. The tunnel/cave was
blasted a chunk at a time out of the rock and took years to finish.
The result is amazing. We walked in through a pipe that the water
flowed through into the cave itself. It has a constant temperature of
55 degrees and there is no life of any kind in it. We could walk
upright through the tunnel and saw the drill marks in the rock face
where the men had used a starbit drill to make holes to insert the
blasting powder into. It really is an amazing piece of engineering
from well over a hundred years ago. We took a short boat ride further
into the cave and got to see the start of stalactites forming; they
are only small, as they’ve only had about 120 years to form. The boat
ride was a little eerie but very peaceful since no noise of any kind
penetrates through into the cave. The guide we had was very cool,
interesting and very informative. At one point during the tour he
turned all the lights out to demonstrate what the workers would have
had to deal with if there lamps went out, it was black since there was
no light filtering in from anywhere. I’m glad I didn’t have to do a
job like that one, I would not have wanted to be a powder monkey thank
you very much.

Mike: You'll just have to settle on being a Monkey! Forgot to say his fire
hydrant factory burnt down and was never rebuilt.