Published: June 15, 2008 12:25 am      

WOLCOTT: Weird, cool, and often overlooked

Caves are cool, especially refreshing when the temperature is in the high 80s and the humidity is higher.

I took a 60-mile detour returning from Albany in 1989 to the Howe Caverns and a 100-mile trip to Mammoth Caves in Kentucky when my in-laws were stationed at Fort Knox. The natural underground tunnels were worth the trip, especially for the kids.

So, why didn’t I drop into the Lockport Cave which is a half-block from Main Street at 2 Pine St. along the Erie Canal? I’ve been by it, coming and going, more than 1,000 times en route to work.

Excuses include: I thought I saw the Lockport Cave before as a kid. I didn’t. I was assigned to other sites. I was. I was like other natives and figured it was just for tourists. I don’t have kids to enjoy it with any more. Right.

And, that’s the way it is. That’s the way it was Sunday at the Lockport Cave and Underground Boat Ride, all tourists, no Lockportians.

The folks I talked to were from Thailand, Singapore and Tennessee. They learned about the cave from a brochure they found at their Niagara Falls motel and they likely learned more about the canal and cave than most residents.

Lockport Cave has a Web site. However, if tourists never heard of Lockport, they won’t know enough to look it up. Wisely, Sunday’s tourist picked the cave instead of the Fashion Outlet. Of course, they were students at MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and by association pretty smart.

“A lot of people don’t know it’s here,” said one of the visitors from the East. “If we didn’t pick up the brochure, we wouldn’t have known. They have to advertise and have a Web site linked to Niagara Falls to tell you next where to go.”

There are lots of caves in Thailand, but nothing like the 1600-foot water power tunnel that was blasted out of solid rock in the 1800s. Birdsill Holly, a pal of Thomas Edison, took advantage of the canal that linked the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes.

There were three factories that used the canal to create power. The Holly Manufacturing Co. produced steel for first fire hydrants. Ironically, it burned down after 10 years of operation.

One plant had a penstock with a 7-foot diameter. That’s the water pipe we walked through en route to the boat ride.

The ambient temperature was 58 degrees. The water was a constant 42 degrees. So were the drips that brought good luck. Sunday’s 16 adventurers should all have good luck.

“It’s interesting a man can make all this stuff,” one visitor said. “It’s great. I like the walk along the canal, and then you can take the boat and experience the cave. It’s good because a lot of people come for the Niagara Falls trip and think there’s nowhere else to go.”

Rick Wagner, a 21-year-old Lockport native who now attends college in Ohio, has been a guide for two years.

“I love the people here,” he said. “You meet people from around the world. There’s all this tourism that comes to Lockport and I never realized my entire life. I don’t think many people in Lockport know the amount of tourists we have. A lot of people go to Niagara Falls and wonder what else to do on the American side.”

The trees along the canal walls are pretty when viewed from the underbelly, and Wagner stopped at shady spots to show off things like the upside-down railroad bridge.

Inside the cave, there are walls of Lockport dolomite, flowstone, spots of gypsum and fool’s gold (pyrite). Stalactites in the man-made cave grow lots faster. Come back in a 100 years and see them get another 7-inches longer.

It’s creepy, a boy said and, of course, he loved it. The cave was opened for Halloween fright before it was open for seasonal tourists.

“It shows a bit of history of America that we, as international students, have the opportunity to learn,” said Yi Chuan of Singapore. “We missed the Outlet Mall for this. We had a choice.”

The right choice.

“My parents didn’t even know this was down here, and my mom grew up here,” said Wagner who took his first tour when he started to work at the cave. “It’s pretty weird ,actually.”

Contact reporter Bill Wolcott

439-9222, ext. 6246.