Built between 1817 and 1825, the Erie Canal provided a water route from Albany to Buffalo, New York, nearly 363 miles to the west. The Canal connected the Hudson River with the Great Lakes via parts of the Mohawk River, through various land cuts and natural lakes.

Photo: NOAA

Today, NOAA cartographers from the Marine Chart Division are converting paper nautical charts to a digital format and incorporating them into NOAA electronic navigational charts (NOAA ENC). NOAA created its suite of ENCs by digitizing its paper nautical charts. An ENC is a vector database that supports all types of marine navigation. Marine navigators can use the system to see their real- time position in relation to features on a chart.

Marine navigators using NOAA ENC. (Photo: NOAA)

By digitizing the paper Erie Canal charts, NOAA can now provide ENCs for the canal from Albany to Lake Ontario. As part of the digitizing process, NOAA cartographers standardized the chart scales covering the canal, moving away from the 64 irregularly shaped paper charts in chart 14786, New York State Canal System.

1:10,000 SCALE NOAA Custom Chart output near Waterford, New York. (Photo: USGS/NOAA)

The ENC is the primary nautical navigation product of the agency, which is ending the production and maintenance of its traditional paper and raster nautical chart products. The remaining paper charts are only being updated with critical corrections until they are fully canceled. Chart 14786 will be one of the last ones canceled, on Dec. 5, 2024.

Now, marine users are referred to the NOAA Custom Chart Application. It is an online map tool for users to create paper and PDF nautical charts derived from the official NOAA ENC.