Erie Canal

In the early nineteenth century, available farmland along the East Coast of the United States decreased as the population grew. Many farmers moved from the Atlantic seaboard east of the Appalachian Mountains into the rich and available farmlands of the Old Northwest, a region where Ohio , Indiana , Illinois , Michigan , and Wisconsin are today. Though the land in the Old Northeast was productive, farmers initially faced a major obstacle in selling their crops. There were few overland roads between the East and the Old Northwest, and it was difficult to ship farm produce of the Old Northwest back to the East for sale. Eastern port cities, such as Baltimore, Maryland ; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania ; and New York City, competed vigorously to be the first to forge transportation links with the Old Northwest, but the mountains of western Pennsylvania and Maryland presented a daunting obstacle to the construction of roads, railroads, and canals, especially for Philadelphia and Baltimore. Only in New York was the passage through the mountains sufficiently low enough to encourage consideration of a water route.

In April 1817, New York State authorized funding for the construction of a 364-mile (586-kilometer) canal to link Albany, New York, on the Hudson River with Buffalo, New York, on Lake Erie. Nothing like

the Erie Canal had ever been tried before. At the time, the biggest canal in the United States was only 27 miles (43 kilometers) long, and only 100 miles (161 kilometers) of canals existed in the entire country. Skeptics claimed the project would end as an expensive failure, good only to line the pockets of politicians and bankrupt the state.

Building “Clinton's Big Ditch”

Despite the drawbacks, the canal's most ardent advocate, New York governor DeWitt Clinton (1769–1828), managed to gather support for the project. Clinton claimed that as soon as it was built, the canal would be crowded with boats heavily laden with produce and wares from remote regions of the United States and that it would create thriving new cities and towns along its path. Critics began to refer to the project as “Clinton's Big Ditch.”

Construction started in Rome, New York, near Lake Oneida on July 4, 1817. Because there were no civil engineers and few professional surveyors in the United States at that time, the New York State canal commissioners selected four amateurs (nonprofessionals, or inexperienced people) to serve as the principal engineers. They did a surprisingly good job, completing the work in a timely fashion and almost on budget. They also showed a flair for innovation. Their designs for soaring aqueducts (channels or pipes that carry water) over the Genesee and Mohawk Rivers were studied by visiting European engineers for years after construction was completed. Other innovations were more basic. For example, the Erie engineers used plows and scrapers drawn by livestock for digging instead of traditional shovels and wheelbarrows. They also produced a device that allowed one man to pull down a tree of any height without an ax as well as a wheeled machine that could pull thirty to forty tree stumps a day using only seven laborers.

The canal laborers were mainly local farmers and mechanics along with a small percentage of Irish immigrants. They signed on with one of the dozens of contractors directly responsible for building the canal sections. The canal was finished with a minimum of corruption. Even labor relations remained fairly calm during construction.

Celebrating the canal

Upon completion in October 1825, the Erie Canal drew praise from around the world. It was the longest canal in the Western world. By the time it was finished, it was already carrying heavy traffic along its 4-foot-deep (1-meter) and 40-foot-wide (12-meter) channel.

New Yorkers celebrated the completion of the Erie Canal with a ten-day party. A ceremonial flotilla, or formation of boats, led by Governor Clinton headed east from Buffalo on October 26. As the governor's boat set off, cannons spaced along the entire 500 miles (805 kilometers) along the Erie Canal and the Hudson River to New York City fired in succession to announce his departure, with the last cannon booming one hundred minutes after the first. As a symbol of the new water link, Clinton carried with him on the boat two kegs of Lake Erie water. On November 4, he emptied one keg in the New York Harbor in front of adoring crowds. Then he sailed out to Sandy Hook, New Jersey , where, in front of a flotilla of small craft and a British squadron playing “Yankee Doodle,” he emptied the second barrel in celebration of “the wedding of the waters” of Lake Erie and the Atlantic Ocean.

Impact

The canal had a tremendous impact on the economy of New York. It opened an inexpensive route for western goods, especially lumber, grain, and flour, to flow into the Hudson and then out into world markets from the wharves of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Coming the other way, imported and domestically produced manufactured goods swept west along the new channel, quickly making the port of New York the busiest in the country. Between 1830 and 1847, well over half of all American imports flowed through New York's harbor. This was because the Erie Canal had cut the cost of sending goods from Buffalo to New York City to less than $8 a ton from a pre-canal cost of $100 a ton. And, it was faster than shipping goods over land.

All along its path, the Erie Canal created a thriving economy. In western New York State, where there had previously been only sparsely settled wilderness and a few villages, prosperous new farms stretched to the north and south of the canal route. More impressive still was the growth of canal towns such as Buffalo, Lockport, and Rochester. Rochester multiplied its population more than twenty times over (from 1,502 to 36,403) between 1820 and 1850, making it the fastest-growing city in the country in the 1820s. With its new automatic flour mills and abundant supplies of water power from the Genesee River, Rochester became a major grain processor, shipping out 369,000 barrels of flour in 1836 alone.

The canal had its critics, and they pointed to some of its unintended results. One side effect of the canal was the increased transmission of deadly diseases. Smallpox and cholera frequently “rode the canal,” affecting people in New York and in the Great Lakes states. Some of the religious reformers of the day were bothered by the style of life on the canal. They disapproved of the common practice of running canal boats (which served liquor) on Sundays and viewed the canal workers as drunken, foul-mouthed, violent rowdies.

The rise and fall of canals

The success of the Erie Canal led to a canal-building mania. New York constructed many more canal branches in the years that followed. But during the 1850s, railroads began to transport much of the freight that had previously been carried on the canals. Canals could not compete. They were expensive to build and repair. Floods were a constant threat. Winter freezes stopped traffic altogether. Railroads were almost as expensive as canals to construct, but they were cheaper to repair and much more reliable in winter.

The Erie Canal still exists today as the most important link in the New York State Barge Canal system, which was built between 1909 and 1918. With other, more efficient, means of transportation available, in the twenty-first century the canal is used primarily for recreational traffic and has been preserved as a place of historic interest.