Years ago, the Union Ship Canal was a pret­ty crowd­ed place: it was the cen­ter­piece of the 70-acre (28 ha) cam­pus of the ”’Han­na Fur­nace Com­pa­ny”’, found­ed in 1899 by the same group of local indus­tri­al­ists who brought the Lack­awan­na Steel Com­pa­ny to the area. Here, freighters docked and unloaded their car­go of iron ore from the Mid­west to be milled into pig iron by, at the com­pa­ny’s peak, a work­force of 800 at a rate of 3,100 tons (2,800 met­ric tons) per day. Like the rest of the West­ern New York steel indus­try, Han­na Fur­nace went bel­­ly-up in the 1980s, but the peace­ful, pleas­ant park that’s on the site today pays homage to its pre­de­ces­sor in a num­ber of ways: dense groves of trees mim­ic the tow­er­ing build­ings that once lined the canal, arti­fi­cial hills recall heaps of lime­stone and ore, its east end is anchored by a mas­sive ladle once used to pour molten iron into molds to hard­en, even the pave­ment design of the walk­ing paths along the canal’s edge echoes the pat­tern of the rail­roads that used to be there. Ship Canal Com­mons also boasts over two miles (3 km) of nature trails and a love­ly foot­bridge over the canal, and its waters are ful­ly eco­log­i­cal­ly restored and boast aquat­ic plants, water­fowl, and fish such as small­mouth bass and perch. As the south­ern end of the ”’In­dus­tri­al Her­itage Trail”’, Ship Canal Com­mons is easy to reach by bike and on foot via the foot­bridge at the south end of the ”’Out­er Har­bor Park­way”’, but auto­mo­bile access is trick­i­er: you have to take either Tifft Street or Ridge Road and wind your way through the indus­tri­al park.