What Is It? for 2/26/12

Bridge remnant...

The bothy .

Hitler's bunker.

Hello Tornado always I enjoy your excellent answers, but this time you are not right. The former visible parts where blasted away by the russian military and the underground part is made fully inaccessible since the end of the 1970ties. The East German "Stasi" has taken measurements and blocked the access. Only a co memorative Plate plate indicates the location.

Greetings.

I was only having fun with a wild guess!

Just a guess, but is it a well disguised "modern" item to fit the local environment?

Something like the exhaust stack from an underground highway tunnel, or even the council shed for storage of tools and equipment used to maintain the parkland.

It's where the best universities in the US keep their ivy covered professors (in ivy covered halls...)

It appears to be one of the few surviving locks along the old Erie canal,

Looks like a perfect spot for a geocache.

Yes, I think it is bunker or a silo. Maybe an unfinished or damaged tank loader.

They fixed any of them up?

This is an old lock on the C&O canal in park in Western Maryland.

Several miles of the C&O still in use as tourist attraction in Georgetown.

This looks very familiar!

I'd say that it's part of an original Erie Canal lock that parallels the Mohawk River and NYS Thruway in upstate NY......possibly near the outfall of the Schoharie Creek at the Mohawk River????

Or near the Schenectady NY General Electric Plant in the Town of Rotterdam NY?????

Or possibly the locks located mid-way between Utica and Syracuse right beside the east-bound lanes of the NYS Thruway???

Zeppelin loading terminal.

After doing a little bit of online research, the photograph looks like it may be a hot of the southern end of Erie Canal Lock #60 located near Macedon NY, which is about mid-way between Rochester and Buffalo.

Check out the center photograph at the bottom of the Macedon section:

http://www.eriecanal.org/MacedonPalmyra.html#Lock60

You be the judge....

Also, it looks like the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor is working with the NYS Canal Corporation, State Historic Preservation Office, and Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) to nominate the NYS Barge Canal System to the National Register of Historic Places, with the application slated for a June 2012 submission date.

You mean this one:

Enlarged Erie Canal Lock No. 60 -- South (single length) chamber; Middle: looking west from within the canal prism

It does look very similar.

Yes USB, that's the one I had mentioned. No other photographs of existing and surviving Erie Canal lock works are even remotely close to the one that the OP has posted.

Granted that the one that you have posted show the area "cleaned up" somewhat of brush and trees, but I'm 95% sure it's the correct site; the pic appears to be from a different angle, so that makes it difficult + there apparently is a timeline difference too.

Another thing, look at the power poles in the background.....the OP's pic shows a single power pole whereas the pic that you posted shows a double-pole arrangement with a cross bar. But they are located in the approximate same location from the looks of things. Guessing that the power lines were upgraded sometime recently. So, I'm also guessing that the OP's pic is an older one before the NYS Canal Corp. started cleaning up the old Erie Canal sites. I surmise that they did this during the time period where they started building the new bike trails along the canal in the last 20-25 years. Your pic shows how most of the Erie Canal sites look now days....cleaned up for recreational use, ie, tourism draw. I must say that most, but not all, are cleaned up to a good extent, as some sites have some issues that prevent easy access to them, mainly due to due to standing/stagnant water issues or the presence of the Mohawk River/NYS Barge Canal waters.

Well, that's my take on things! Gotta love this area (throughout upstate NY) with all of it's Americana history...glad that I grew up here and still live here! Civil Engineering delights for the eyeballs! hehehehehe

Ballard for the telephone pole real bad drivers around there.

Its another futile attempt by man to conquer nature. In time it will be reintegrated or decompose back into the environment to be rediscovered for archeologists to contemplate its true meaning as possibly a place of sacrifice.

Aha! Someone else who doubts that all previous human civilizations spent their time worshipping and sacrificing. Thank Juno!

While its known that some worshiping and sacrificing took place within some cultures at some times, it always struck me as funny - and lacking in imagination by the anthropologists - that this seems to be their only answer to any odd artifact they uncover.

The Admiralty Blockhouse looks an ideal place for politicians and bankers... Obsidien knives would sell like hot cakes

I have some right here sir. Knives, halberd blades, arrow tips....all with a beautiful finish...

It looks like the backstop in Del's back yard.

It's a utility pole! (overhead electric service).

It's Lock 9 of the Erie Canal. You can see more pictures here: http://www.tug44.org/canal.history/erie-lock-9/

The second photo shows an expanded view of this double lock. (The part on the left was pictured in this blog entry.)

lonster, SolarEagle, CaptMoosie, and Buttons all knew what it was but not which one. PMoon was also right - there is a telephone pole in the picture.

Opppps I missed looking very closely at Lock 9 in my search! LOL

Thanks Savvy for sharing a very fun thread!