The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east–west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the upper Great Lakes above Niagara Falls, vastly reducing the costs of transporting people and goods across the Appalachians. The Erie Canal accelerated the settlement of the Great Lakes region, the westward expansion of the United States, and the economic ascendancy of New York state.
A canal from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes was first proposed in the 1780s, but a formal survey was not conducted until 1808. The New York State Legislature authorized construction in 1817. Political opponents of the canal, referring to its lead supporter New York Governor DeWitt Clinton, denigrated the project as "Clinton's Folly" and "Clinton's Big Ditch". The canal saw quick success upon opening on October 26, 1825, with toll revenue covering the state's construction debt within the first year of operation. The westward connection gave New York City a strong advantage over all other US ports and brought major growth to canal cities such as Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo.
The construction of the Erie Canal was a landmark civil engineering achievement in the early history of the United States. When built, the canal was the second-longest in the world after the Grand Canal in China. Initially wide and deep, the canal was expanded several times, most notably from 1905 to 1918 when the "Barge Canal" was built and over half the original route was abandoned. The modern canal measures long, wide, and deep. It has 35 locks, including the Waterford Flight, the steepest locks in the United States. When leaving the canal, boats must also traverse the Black Rock Lock to reach Lake Erie or the Troy Federal Lock to reach the tidal Hudson. The overall elevation difference is about .
The Erie's peak year was 1855, when 33,000 commercial shipments took place. It continued to be competitive with railroads until about 1902, when tolls were abolished. Commercial traffic declined heavily in the latter half of the 20th century due to competition from trucking via the newly developed Interstate Highway System and the 1959 opening of the larger St. Lawrence Seaway. The canal's last regularly scheduled hauler, the Day Peckinpaugh, ended service in 1994.
Today, the Erie Canal is mainly used by recreational watercraft. It connects the three other canals in the New York State Canal System: the Champlain, Oswego, and Cayuga–Seneca. Some long-distance boaters take the Erie as part of the Great Loop. The canal has also become a tourist attraction in its own right—numerous parks and museums are dedicated to its history. The New York State Canalway Trail is a popular cycling path that follows the canal across the state. In 2000, Congress designated the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor to protect and promote the system.
Ambiguity in name The waterway today referred to as the Erie Canal is quite different from the nineteenth-century Erie Canal. More than half of the original Erie Canal was destroyed or abandoned during construction of the New York State Barge Canal in the early 20th century. The sections of the original route remaining in use were widened significantly, mostly west of Syracuse, with bridges rebuilt and locks replaced. It was called the Barge Canal at the time, but that name fell into disuse with the disappearance of commercial traffic and the increase of recreational travel in the later 20th century.
History
Background
Before railroads, water transport was the most cost-effective way to ship bulk goods. A mule can only carry about but can draw a barge weighing as much as along a towpath."Works of Man", Ronald W. Clark, (1985), Viking Penguin, New York quotation page 87: "There was little experience moving bulk loads by carts, while a packhorse would carry only an eighth of a ton []. On a soft road, a horse might be able to draw ths of a ton [() or 5×]. But if the load were carried by a barge on a waterway, then up to 30 tons [( or ) or 240×] could be drawn by the same horse." In total, a canal could cut transport costs by about 95 percent.Using Clark's Works of Man figures, a mule can draw 60,000 pounds but carry only 250 pounds, which needed men to load and unload daily. Mules also need to carry grain (parasitic weight), and for the same tonnages required far more men as a labor force, drastically increasing running costs.
In the early years of the United States, transportation of goods between the coastal ports and the interior was slow and difficult. Close to the seacoast, rivers provided easy inland transport up to the fall line, since floating vessels encounter much less friction than land vehicles. However, the Appalachian Mountains were a great obstacle to further transportation or settlement, stretching from Maine to Alabama, with just five places where mule trains or wagon roads could be routed.The five east–west crossings of the Appalachians are: Plains of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi (around the bottom), the Cumberland Gap pass connecting North Carolina/Southern Virginia with Kentucky/Tennessee, the Cumberland Narrows pass connecting Cumberland, Maryland (in Western Maryland) and Northern Virginia with West Virginia and Western Pennsylvania via Brownsville, Pennsylvania and the Monongahela River or the Youghiogheny River valley (both of the Ohio & Mississippi river system), the gaps of the Allegheny connecting the Susquehanna River Valley in central Pennsylvania with the Allegheny River valley (and again the Ohio Country), and lastly, the Mohawk River water gap and valley tributary of the Hudson River, creating what later advertising would call the level water route westwards. Passengers and freight bound for the western parts of the country had to travel overland, a journey made more difficult by the rough condition of the roads. In 1800, it typically took 2½ weeks to travel overland from New York to Cleveland, Ohio, () and 4 weeks to Detroit ().
The principal exportable product of the Ohio Valley was grain, which was a high-volume, low-priced commodity, bolstered by supplies from the coast. Frequently, it was not worth the cost of transporting it to far-away population centers. This was a factor leading to farmers in the west turning their grains into whiskey for easier transport and higher sales, and later the Whiskey Rebellion. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it became clear to coastal residents that the city or state that succeeded in developing a cheap, reliable route to the West would enjoy economic success, and the port at the seaward end of such a route would see business increase greatly.Joel Achenbach, "America's River; From Washington and Jefferson to the Army Corps of Engineers, everyone had grandiose plans to tame the Potomac. Fortunately for us, they all failed". The Washington Post, May 5, 2002; p. W.12. In time, projects were devised in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and relatively deep into the coastal states.
Topography The Mohawk River (a tributary of the Hudson River) rises near Lake Ontario and runs in a glacial meltwater channel just north of the Catskill range of the Appalachian Mountains, separating them from the geologically distinct Adirondacks to the north. The Mohawk and Hudson valleys form the only cut across the Appalachians north of Alabama. A navigable canal through the Mohawk Valley would allow an almost complete water route from New York City in the south to Lake Ontario and Lake Erie in the west. Via the canal and these lakes, other Great Lakes, and to a lesser degree, related rivers, a large part of the continent's interior and many settlements would be made well connected to the Eastern seaboard.
Conception
Among the first attempts made by European colonists to improve upon the future state's navigable waterways was the construction in 1702 of the Wood Creek Carry, or Oneida Carry, a short portage road connecting Wood Creek to the Mohawk River near modern-day Rome, New York. The first documented instance of the idea of a canal to tie the East Coast to the new western settlements via New York's waterways was discussed as early as 1724: New York provincial official Cadwallader Colden made a passing reference in a report on fur trading to improving the natural waterways of western New York.
Colden and subsequent figures in the history of the Erie Canal and its development drew inspiration from other great works of the so-called canal age, including France's Canal du Midi and the Bridgewater Canal in England. The attempt in the 1780s by George Washington to build a canal from the tidewaters of the Potomac into the fledgling nation's interior was also well known to the planners of the Erie Canal.
Gouverneur Morris and Elkanah Watson were early proponents of a canal along the Mohawk River. Their efforts led to the creation of the "Western and Northern Inland Lock Navigation Companies" in 1792, which took the first steps to improve navigation on the Mohawk and construct a canal between the Mohawk and Lake Ontario,Calhoun, Daniel Hovey. The American civil engineer: Origins and conflict. Technology Press, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1960. but it was soon discovered that private financing was insufficient. Christopher Colles, who was familiar with the Bridgewater Canal, surveyed the Mohawk Valley, and made a presentation to the New York state legislature in 1784, proposing a shorter canal from Lake Ontario. The proposal drew attention and some action but was never implemented.
Jesse Hawley had envisioned encouraging the growing of large quantities of grain on the western New York plains, then largely unsettled, for sale on the Eastern seaboard. However, he went bankrupt trying to ship grain to the coast. While in Canandaigua debtors' prison, Hawley began pressing for the construction of a canal along the Mohawk River valley. Support for a canal also came from Joseph Ellicott, agent for the Holland Land Company in Batavia. Ellicott realized that a canal would add value to the land he was selling in the western part of the state and served as one of the original Canal Commissioners.
New York legislators became interested in the possibility of building a canal across New York in the first decade of the 19th century. Shipping goods west from Albany was a costly and tedious affair; there was no railroad yet, and to cover the distance from Buffalo to New York City by stagecoach took two weeks. The problem was that the land rises about from the Hudson to Lake Erie. Locks at the time could handle up to of lift, so even with the heftiest cuttings and viaducts, fifty locks would be required along the canal. Such a canal would be expensive to build even with modern technology; in 1800, the expense was barely imaginable. President Thomas Jefferson called it "little short of madness" and rejected it.
Eventually, Hawley interested New York Governor DeWitt Clinton in the project. There was much opposition, and the project was ridiculed as "Clinton's folly" and "Clinton's ditch".The New York State Canal System, The Erie Canal Association.Erie Canal Opens, This Day in History: October 26, American HistoryChannel.comFrank E. Sadowski Jr., "Clinton's Big Ditch", The Erie Canal Association. In 1817, though, Clinton received approval from the legislature for $7 million for construction.
Construction