You cross bridges like this in seconds, but let’s stop.  Now you’re standing on the bridge, Route 32 aka Plainville Road, Onondaga County.  That waterway below you is called the State Ditch, a shortcut dug to bypass a meander in the Seneca River.  Look to your left; that way leads west, eventually Buffalo and beyond.

See the bridge in the image below, directly below the red circle?  I’ll get to the red circle.

Look to your right in the image below;  that way leads to Three Rivers Junction, where you can head into the Oswego Canal or eastward to Waterford and the Hudson River.  The red circle marks the same location as on the google map above, i.e., where the State Ditch joins the Seneca River.  

And here’s my point.  Photos in the CSNY collection depict scenes hardly imaginable today. My assumption is that the photo below was taken from a bridge near the location of the current one.  The red circle marks the same point above and below.  Changes in tree cover mask that fact.

The tugboat lower left is Shanley, No. 13 of the James Stewart Co (?).  Shanley was built in Newburgh NY, 1908, was 44.4′ by 14.4 by 5.0′, crew of 2, and 75 horsepower from steam, according to MVUS 1910 edition.  A few decades later it burned in what’s now Tampa Bay FL.

I can’t identify the tugboat or the dredge below, but maybe someone reading this can. 

Let’s go back to a 2020s google map street view and move south of the bridge.  Note the stately farmhouse to the left below.

Here’s the same view a century ago, possibly the same bridge and certainly the same house, slightly modified today.  The road has changed, and tree cover is much thicker  now that we no longer use fields to grow as much “hay energy.”

Photos from the CSNY collection allow us to look “behind” a nearby house.  Before a bridge was built, the house served as a hotel, and 

was the location of a ferry.  The photo is undated.

 

Another photo shows the ferry, which appears to be a design of rope ferry.

More photos and images on the State Ditch can be seen in this 2019 CSNY FB post.

Many thanks to Bill Hecht and Lynn Fall for assistance with this post.  If you enjoyed this post, please check out Jordan Memories, the work of Lynn, Bill, and others.  Hamlet, village, and town names in parts of New York can get confusing, but Jordan is a village.

Any errors of fact or interpretation are mine, WVD.  Full disclosure:  I’ve been under that bridge twice but never over it.  Nor have I traveled on Plainville Road except vicariously with the Google pegman.

I invite you to do a guest post using a photo from the CSNY collection and your contemporary photos.