Erie Canal

Erie Canal, from Albany to Buffalo, connects the Hudson River with Lake Erie. Gouverneur Morris first conceived the idea (1777), and Washington approved a plan suggested in 1783, as a means of unifying the nation. Governor Clinton authorized a thorough survey (1791), and work was begun two years later, but progress was slow until De Witt Clinton made the canal an issue in the gubernatorial campaign of 1817. The canal was opened in 1825, after an expenditure of more than $7,000,000 to create its length of 352 miles. Largely responsible for the commerce of New York state, it also did much to unify the interest of seaboard communities and the western country. During a later enlargement of the channel, politics entered into the management, and a fraudulent “canal ring” was disclosed in the mid‐19th century. Herbert Quick's novel Vandemark's Folly and other fiction by W.D. Edmonds and Samuel Hopkins Adams deal with the great days of the Erie Canal, before the growth of railroads. There is also the well‐known “Erie Canal Ballad.”