Gasport, NY

Gasport is a hamlet and census-designated place in the Town of Royalton, set along NY 31 and the Erie Canal east of Lockport. The name comes from two things that meet here: the 1826 discovery of flammable natural gas rising from a spring, and the canal port that grew around it. Today the canal is still the clearest local line, with Gasport Landing, a lift bridge, a marina, and the canal trail threading through the hamlet. Gasport is one of the smaller canal communities, but it has a useful location between Lockport and the towns farther east along the waterway. Its story is less about a separate municipal center than about what the canal and the old gas spring put on the map.