See the world... 146 years ago

I'm in the midst of writing a rather lengthy document justifying why one of our microwave links cannot be directly upgraded with digital equipment — part of the Sprint / Nextel project. It passed the 100-page mark this morning, complete with charts, maps, and pages of calculations. You can understand that even recreational writing isn't exactly high on my list of diversions today.

So as something of a make-good, here's a link to antique maps of Onondaga County, circa 1860. This was about forty years after the Erie Canal had been completed through Syracuse (it was named Corinth then), and about twenty years after railroads began to dominate the streets.

One of the local hot topics, when folks aren't debating the future of Destiny USA, is the impact route 81 has had on the near-south side. The oft-repeated claim is that the highway created an artificial divide between the University and the residential area to its west, south of downtown. It's an engaging theory, and one I bought into — I remember when the cranes went through with their wrecking balls to clear the way for the roadbed. It was exactly the noisy, dusty, destructive spectacle that appeals to small boys. The problem with the theory is that while it sounds logical, a look at maps over the course of the city's history shows that it wasn't route 81 that created the division: it was the railroad that predated route 81 by a century.

The antique maps vividly illustrate the degree to which the city's development was dominated and its communities defined by its transportation arteries: first, by ancient Indian trails; the Erie and Oswego canals; the railroads; the major surface roads; and the interstate highways. Some of our local politicians seem to have things backwards, assuming that the communities came first.

I love maps; they have the power to tell stories of things that are only dim shadows on today's landscape... like the tunnel that took the New York Central's main line under the Erie Canal just east of Beech Street. You can still find traces of it near the Burger King.

Darn. I didn't think I was in the mood to write. Now I need to get cranked up about microwave paths again.