It is 1880 and you are riding on a packet boat through Lyons, New York; as you pass on through Lock 55 the air is thick with the smell of peppermint oil having just been loaded for shipment by the Hotchkiss building. Your packet boat just turned north going under the Elm Street Bridge; the familiar symbols of Lyons, the Wayne County Courthouse and the clock on the Methodist Church are in the distance. Up ahead is the Montezuma Street Bridge where your packet boat will again head east along what is now Clyde Rd. When the Barge Canal opened in 1918 this section of the Enlarged Erie Canal was filled in and is now a parking lot. This mural painted by artist Erica Swenson, an RIT graduate, is depicting the Enlarged Erie Canal as it wound its way through the village in the late 1800’s. Clinton’s Ditch, as it was originally called, became the iconic waterway establishing settlement patterns for most of the United States, and made New York the financial capital of the world. Mural Mania would like to thank Mike Victorious for providing his MVP Auto Parts building for the installation of this gateway mural. Mural Mania would also like to thank the Boehmier Foundation for their generous donation to fund this mural. This mural is associated with the 2016 Global Mural Conference. This mural was dedicated in October of 2016. This mural was painted on Evolon.

Artwork by Erica Swenson, Mark DeCracker, Bill Herren and Somantha Nolloth 2016