**************************Field puzzle read description********************************
This cache will take you to Enlarged Lock 61. Many people don't know that the erie canal wasn't dug once, but three times!
In 1825 the original canal was opened and was so successful that in the 1840's The Enlarged Erie Canal was built. You might think "Why would they dig a new canal? Why not just widen the original?" Well they actually did both. You have to think of the Erie Canal as the first highway system. This was the best way to get from the east coast to the interior of the country. If you had Packet boats filled with passengers and cargo being pulled by mule teams up and down the canal day and night, you couldn't just shut the whole thing down to build new locks, dig deeper sections and update ports along the way. They would work in the winter when the canal was drained and do as much as they could before spring. Some projects were so massive that they would have taken several years to complete and perhaps a new route would have worked better.
When the NY State Barge Canal was built in the early 1900's, new routes were excavated, new locks were built and some old locks were abandoned or repurposed. Lock 61 here was turned into a spillway to help regulate the flow of water around the new lock across the street. The old lock gates were removed and spillway chutes were installed on one side of this double lock, that could be opened and closed by lock tenders. Remarkably, the chutes and gears that operate the spillway are still in use today, over a hundred years later! You can still see where the old lock gates would have gone and can imagine boats passing through on their way east and west.
You're looking for a large wooden box 13"x 9"x 6". Finding the box that holds this geocache shouldn't be too difficult. Opening the box however may prove to be more of a challenge, even though I've given you the key to open this. Look hard, study the box all over and please don't try to pry it open or unscrew anything to open the box. Please post your dnf's so that I can gauge the difficulty of this cache. Thanks and have fun.