I live in Little Falls. I relocated in 2010, sold my home in Saratoga for 300k, paid $40,500 cash for a beautiful Victorian with good bones. I did 50k in cosmetic renovations. My taxes are cheaper here, I live comfortably. It was the best move I ever made.

Upstate NY is really a beautiful area. So sad to see it in such a depressed state.

I'm European (Swedish), but I must say I love these American Victorian homes. Such amazing architecture.

The Erie Canal and the corridor really have great bones.  No new boom-town can recreate a historic and walkable mainstreet.

I was born in Herkimer, my moms parents were from Little Falls, We moved from Herkimer to Florida in 1966, I can remember that the down town was busy back then and there were lots of factory's too. I walked by the old jail on my way to school at L W Bills every day! You should have turned left after the school, the nice houses are to the west of there. I won my first science award in that school as a first grader; it took a while but I have received U S patents for medical device products! It all started there in that elementary school! Brings back memories,!!

Upstate New York has so many beautiful towns!

I drove cross country from San Diego to Boston one July.  Did Route 66.  This part of New York was the prettiest part of the whole drive.

Dated a girl that went to Utica College in the 80s when I lived in NYC and visited a few times.  Central NY and the Finger Lakes region is stunningly beautiful.  

When the St. Lawrence Seaway opened, it killed every town situated on the Erie Canal.

I lived in NYC for 20 years from 1998-2018. When zip car came out, my friends and I would pool our money together and take long rides all over upstate NY. These villages and towns are some are the most gorgeous places you will ever visit. Several are right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. American spirit and beauty all around. The land of the great Haudenosaunee Confederacy! History is felt in all these little towns and stretches of forest. If you visit NYC, take a short trip up the Hudson and you’ll see some of these beautiful towns.

Upstate NY, this is what I miss.  Picturesque greenspace, lovely old houses and mansions, peaceful walkable downtowns, great Sunday driving areas so to say.  I loved to get lost upstate then.  It is still beautiful, just aged and neglected and in need of good old fashioned care and attention.  It’s too bad the towns lost so much population that was important to the life of these towns.  I still dreaming of going back to upstate to driving through small towns and reminisce about days when the towns had more life but the beauty is definitely unique to ny.  That’s what I miss.

Does anyone recall from the earliest of your school days the song, “Erie Canal?”  “Low bridge, everybody down, low bridge as we’re coming into town.  And you’ll always know your neighbor, you always know your pal if you’ve traveled on the Erie Canal.”  Something like that.

Guess that didn’t work out too well!

I live close to Little Falls on a country road with homes with 2-15 acres.  It's a wonderful place to live.  The basics are in place.  The bane on the small towns in upstate NY are the out of area investers.  They buy "investment properties" on the cheap and don't maintain the buildings.  I'd say 50% of the homes are rentals owned by out of region folks.  There is a lot of  poverty.  All the manufacturing jobs have left.    Upstate NY is full of opportunity for manufacturing location -- inexpensive properties and lower cost lifestyle.  

Upstate is cursed by the taxes/obligations put on us by Albany and New York City.

The grey building is an active bank -- Adirondack Bank.  Little Falls also has a nice small hospital part of the Bassett system.

What is really killing these towns is the taxes.  Not only are income taxes high, but the property taxes are insane.  My family has lived in New York state since before the civil war.  My 90 year old father is the last one not in a cemetery.

the Erie Canal was dug. It was a monumental engineering project that involved excavating a channel across the state of New York to connect the Hudson River with Lake Erie. The canal was constructed from 1817 to 1825 and was considered a remarkable feat of civil engineering at the time.

The construction process was labor-intensive and required the manual labor of thousands of workers, including many Irish immigrants. They used shovels, wheelbarrows, and horse-drawn carts to dig the canal, which was originally 40 feet wide and 4 feet deep. The canal stretched approximately 363 miles (584 kilometers) from Albany on the Hudson River to Buffalo on the shores of Lake Erie.

The project also involved the construction of numerous locks, aqueducts, and bridges to manage changes in elevation and allow for the passage of boats. The Erie Canal's success dramatically reduced the cost and time of transportation, spurred economic growth, and played a crucial role in the westward expansion of the United States.

Little Falls, NY, is known as one of the friendliest and most stunningly beautiful small cities along the Erie Canal. The peace and quiet is immeasurable!

The idea of such a beautiful city like Little Falls with such low rates of both crime and cost makes me wonder why aren't people moving here, esp in this age of working remotely. It's stunning

Thanks for being honest, Joe. What you say is true; the place is beautiful but economically done. My wife and I grew up in Little Falls in the 50's and 60's when it was a beautiful place. Then we moved around for a few years and settled in Herkimer for 30 years and watched the village fall apart. We have moved to a new location of relative prosperity and refer to the Mohawk Valley as the place where everything is rusty, dirty, or broken. As other commenters have noted, taxes are killing our beloved state.

Beautiful video.  Watching here in herkimer NY .  at 350 pm you almost showed my house.  First time watching your YouTube.   Just showed up on my screen.

Thank you! I was born in Little Falls in 1963. My parents were both born there. My grandparents on my moms side had emigrated from Poland just prior to WWI, And my dads from Ireland during the potato famine. My dad worked for the utility then known as “Niagra Mohawk”. We moved in the mid 1960’s to Glens Falls NY, as my dad was transferred by “NIMO” but traveled to LF quite a bit since we had family there. LF was still quite alive in the 60’s and 70’s. It’s claim to fame other than the NYS Canal System, was manufacturing. All those big old factories made items that were used in WWII. It is a beautiful place, and up on the hills where the mansions are, are homes that were owned by industrialists who built the city. The place still reeks of history so thank you for the video tour.

Im surprised at just how deserted the canal is. This seems like a tourist attraction being ignored. In the UK and Europe the canals are enjoying a major revival with many millions being spent restoring old channels and locks plus new marina developments which are seeing the revival of many dying towns.