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Why was the Erie Canal built for?
The Erie Canal provided a direct water route from New York City to the Midwest, triggering large-scale commercial and agricultural development—as well as immigration—to the sparsely populated frontiers of western New York, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and points farther west.
When was the Erie Canal built and finished?
Built between 1817 and 1825, the original Erie Canal traversed 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo. It was the longest artificial waterway and the greatest public works project in North America.
What are 3 important facts about the Erie Canal?
Interesting Facts about the Erie Canal Today, the canal has 36 locks. There was a towpath along the side of the canal where horses or mules would tow the boat along the canal. The horse drivers were called "hoggees." The original canal was 4 feet deep and 40 feet wide.
Where did the Erie Canal come from?
In 1817, following election as governor of New York, Clinton persuaded the state legislature to authorize loans for $7 million to build a canal from Buffalo, on the eastern shore of Lake Erie, to the upper Hudson, passing through the Mohawk Valley region.
Can you swim in Erie Canal?
Swimming, diving or fishing in the lock chambers or from the lock walls or any other canal structure is prohibited. Hunting on, at or near canal locks or any other canal structure is prohibited. Any person violating this section shall be subject to a penalty of not to exceed $ 25 for each offense.
How long did the Erie Canal take to build?
eight yearsThe 360-mile canal connecting the Hudson River to the Great Lakes was built in eight years through thick forests and stubborn rock.
Who built the Erie Canal and why?
In the winter, the roads dissolved in a sea of mud. An imprisoned flour merchant named Jesse Hawley envisioned a better way: a Canal from Buffalo on the eastern shore of Lake Erie to Albany on the upper Hudson River, a distance of almost 400 miles.
How deep is the Erie Canal now?
12-23 ft deepFast FactsJUST THE FACTSCanal dimensions, 1918- present Erie Barge Canal12-23 ft deep x 120-200 ft wide; locks 310 ft longCost to build$7,143,789Return on Investment10 yearsNumber of aqueducts to bypass rivers and streams1813 more rows
Why was the Erie Canal drained?
The Erie Canal is drained every year to allow repairs and maintenance over the winter.
Who planned the Erie Canal?
Erie CanalOriginal ownerNew York StatePrincipal engineerBenjamin WrightOther engineer(s)Canvass White, Amos EatonConstruction beganJuly 4, 1817 (at Rome, New York)25 more rows
Is Erie Canal still used?
Nearly 200 years old and still going strong. New York's canal system has been in continuous operation since 1825, longer than any other constructed transportation system on the North American continent. Over the years, it has been enlarged three times to accommodate larger boats and more traffic.
Who owns the Erie Canal?
The Canal Corporation runs the New York State Canal System, which includes the Erie, Champlain, Oswego and Cayuga-Seneca canals. Spanning 524 miles, the waterway links the Hudson River with the Great Lakes, the Finger Lakes and Lake Champlain.
Is Erie Canal still in use today?
Nearly 200 years old and still going strong. New York's canal system has been in continuous operation since 1825, longer than any other constructed transportation system on the North American continent. Over the years, it has been enlarged three times to accommodate larger boats and more traffic.
How many lives were lost in the Erie Canal?
1,000 deathsThe other three canal projects that made Safer America's list included the Erie Canal, which recorded 1,000 deaths from its 50,000 workers.
When was the first canal built?
circa 4000 BCThe oldest-known canals were built in Mesopotamia circa 4000 BC. The Indus Valley Civilization in Pakistan and North India (from circa 2600 BC) had the first canal irrigation system in the world. The longest canal of ancient times was the Grand Canal of China.
Is the Ohio and Erie Canal still in use?
The Ohio & Erie Canal became the spine of Cuyahoga Valley National Park, established in 1974. In 1996, it also became the backbone of the new Ohio & Erie Canalway. This national heritage area continues to improve life here in Northeast Ohio. The canal no longer carries goods, news, or people.
What was the idea of the canal?
The idea of a canal to unite the East coast with the interior of the United States was not a new one. Before the Revolutionary War, George Washington expressed concerns about the loss of lands west of the Appalachian Mountains to the French or Canadians, or both, due to a lack of connection. After the war, Washington organized the Patowmack Company to turn the Potomac River into a canal running from the coast up to the mountains. This project was a financial disaster, and was still under construction by Washington’s death in 1799. It was an achievement in engineering, however.
Why did the Mohawk Valley need a canal?
New York’s geography is favorable to a canal across the state. The Mohawk Valley forms a natural pathway through the Catskill and Adirondack Mountains, so it made sense that a canal should be constructed through the state this way.
What was the advantage of shipping people by canal?
The cost of shipping cargo on a canal as opposed to overland was also vastly less, and it would become incredibly profitable to move more and more items to market. Not to mention the advantage of moving people by way of the canal! The prevailing attitude among Americans of the 19th century was that their Creator had provided the tools, setting, and intelligence necessary to undertake such a project, so why not do it?
Why did George Washington want to turn the Potomac River into a canal?
Before the Revolutionary War, George Washington expressed concerns about the loss of lands west of the Appalachian Mountains to the French or Canadians , or both, due to a lack of connection. After the war, Washington organized the Patowmack Company to turn the Potomac River into a canal running from the coast up to the mountains.
What are the advantages of canals?
So what concrete advantages would a canal give? Although canal technology seems very primitive to us, in this age of self-driving cars and supersonic jet travel, in the 19th century, canals were an incredible technological innovation. Canals were flat and calm, unlike rivers, and it was easy for a boat to carry large amounts of cargo over water as opposed to over land (especially considering the condition of roads at the time!). Canal boats were not yet motorized, and there was control over speed and steering by way of the captain on board, and the driver leading the animals (mules or horses) pulling the boat by way of the towpath.
Why was the Erie Canal built?
It was built to create a navigable water route from New York City and the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, originally stretching for 363 miles (584 km) from the Hudson River in Albany to Lake Erie in Buffalo. Completed in 1825, it was the second-longest canal in the world (after the Grand Canal in China) and greatly enhanced the development and economy of the cities of New York, including Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, and New York City, as well as the United States. This was in part due to the new ease of transport of salt and other goods, and industries that developed around those.
When was the Erie Canal enlarged?
It was enlarged between 1834 and 1862. The canal's peak year was 1855, when 33,000 commercial shipments took place. In 1918, the western part of the canal was enlarged to become part of the New York State Barge Canal, which also extended to the Hudson River running parallel to the eastern half of the Erie Canal.
How were canal boats pulled?
Canal boats up to 3.5 feet (1.1 m) in draft were pulled by horses and mules walking on the towpath. The canal had one towpath, generally on the north side. When canal boats met, the boat with the right of way remained on the towpath side of the canal. The other boat steered toward the berm (or heelpath) side of the canal. The driver (or "hoggee", pronounced HO-gee) of the privileged boat kept his towpath team by the canalside edge of the towpath, while the hoggee of the other boat moved to the outside of the towpath and stopped his team. His towline would be unhitched from the horses, go slack, fall into the water and sink to the bottom, while his boat coasted with its remaining momentum. The privileged boat's team would step over the other boat's towline, with its horses pulling the boat over the sunken towline without stopping. Once clear, the other boat's team would continue on its way.
What is the Erie Canal?
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.
What did Ellicott realize about the canal?
Ellicott realized that a canal would add value to the land he was selling in the western part of the state. He later became the first canal commissioner. New York legislators became interested in the possibility of building a canal across New York in the first decade of the 19th century.
Why are there copies of canal passenger lists?
Because so many immigrants traveled on the canal, many genealogists have sought copies of canal passenger lists. Apart from the years 1827–1829, canal boat operators were not required to record passenger names or report them to the New York government. Some passenger lists survive today in the New York State Archives, and other sources of traveler information are sometimes available.
How much did it cost to build the barge canal?
In 1905, construction of the Barge Canal began, which was completed in 1918, at a cost of $96.7 million. Freight traffic reached a total of 5.2 million short tons (4.7 million metric tons) by 1951, before declining in the face of combined rail and truck competition.
What was the success of the Erie Canal?
Its success propelled New York City into a major commercial centre and encouraged canal construction throughout the United States. In addition, construction of the canal served as a training ground for many of the engineers who built other American canals and railroads in the ensuing decades. Erie Canal Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Where was the Erie Canal dug?
Erie Canal, Lockport, New York. Work was undertaken by multiple contractors who agreed to dig small sections of the canal. Each contractor was then responsible for supplying equipment and for hiring, supervising, and paying his own workers. Using horses and manpower, the canal was dug across the state.
How many locks were built in the Mohawk Valley?
On the eastern section, the lower Mohawk Valley required the construction of 27 locks over only 50 km (30 miles) in order to surmount a series of natural rapids, including those found in Cohoes and Little Falls. Erie Canal, Lockport, New York.
What was the first canal in the United States to connect western waterways with the Atlantic Ocean?
Taking advantage of the Mohawk River gap in the Appalachian Mountains, the Erie Canal, 363 miles (584 km) long, was the first canal in the United States to connect western waterways with the Atlantic Ocean. Construction began in 1817 and was completed in 1825. Its success propelled New York City into a major commercial centre ...
What was the first canal in the United States?
Erie Canal, historic waterway of the United States, connecting the Great Lakes with New York City via the Hudson River at Albany. Taking advantage of the Mohawk River gap in the Appalachian Mountains, the Erie Canal, 363 miles (584 km) long, was the first canal in the United States to connect western waterways with the Atlantic Ocean. Construction began in 1817 and was completed in 1825. Its success propelled New York City into a major commercial centre and encouraged canal construction throughout the United States. In addition, construction of the canal served as a training ground for many of the engineers who built other American canals and railroads in the ensuing decades.
Why did the Governor of New York pour water from Lake Erie into the Atlantic Ocean?
New York Governor DeWitt Clinton pouring water from Lake Erie into the Atlantic Ocean to mark the completion of the Erie Canal.
How wide is the Erie Canal?
With a typical canal prism shape—12 metres (40 feet) wide on the top, 8.5 metres (28 feet) wide at the bottom, and 1.2 metres (4 feet) deep—the engineers patterned the Erie Canal after the Middlesex Canal in Massachusetts. The Erie required 83 locks, each made of stone, to move boats up and down the natural elevations.
When was the Erie Canal completed?
This original Erie Canal was completed on October 26, 1825.
What is the Erie Canal?
The Erie Canal is a manmade waterway that joins the Great Lakes with the Hudson River and, by extension, the Atlantic Ocean. It served as an important economic waterway and migration route for many people. In fact, after it was opened, the cost of shipping a ton of wheat from Ohio to New York City dropped by 90%!
How deep was the Erie Canal?
Actual construction of the Erie Canal began on July 4, 1817, in Rome, New York. The canal was originally 40 feet wide, 4 feet deep and could float boats loaded with 30 tons of freight. On one side of the canal was a 10-foot wide towpath. Here, horses and mules would be tied up to the boats they would pull through the canal.
How many locks were there in the Hudson River canal?
All in all, the original canal was constructed with 83 locks and 18 aqueducts that helped move it through rivers and ravines as it rose over 500 feet from the Hudson River to Lake Erie over the course of several hundred miles.
How was the Erie Canal built?
The Erie Canal was built decades before the invention of dynamite to efficiently blast through stubborn rock, or steam-powered earth-movers and excavators to clear mud, rock and rubble. Instead, the thickly forested land was cleared and the 40-foot wide canal was dug and the locks were constructed by the raw manpower of an estimated 50,000 ...
Who Built the Erie Canal?
The first barges from Buffalo arrive in New York City via the newly-opened Erie Canal, 1825.
How many locks were there in the Erie Canal?
The man-made waterway, designed by untrained engineers, featured 83 separate locks, two massive stone-and-cement aqueducts to crisscross the Mohawk River, and a final ingenious “flight” of interconnected locks to raise boats over the 70-foot Niagara Escarpment. The Erie Canal was built decades before the invention of dynamite to efficiently blast ...
What was the name of the barge that DeWitt took on the Erie Canal?
Yet in 1825, just eight years after workers broke ground, DeWitt boarded a barge called the Seneca Chief and took a victory cruise along the newly opened Erie Canal, an engineering marvel unlike anything America had ever seen.
What was the name of the swamps that were a result of the canal?
According to an 1820 report from the Canal Commission, three-quarters of these early laborers were “born among us.” But those demographics changed quickly when work on the canal moved westward into a soggy and mosquito-plagued region called the Montezuma swamps. Unable to convince upstate farmers to muck it out in the inhospitable territory, contractors hired teams of Irish immigrants freshly arrived in New York Harbor. Thousands of Irish laborers were sickened or died in the swamps from what was called “Genesee fever,” but which was actually malaria.
How many men worked to dig the Erie Canal?
Wages were 50 cents to a dollar a day and the work in those first years was painfully slow. From 1818 to 1819, around three thousand men and 700 horses labored every day to dig the section of the Erie Canal from Utica to the Seneca River.
Which section of the Erie Canal blocked access to Lake Erie?
The final section of the Erie Canal posed the greatest challenge of all. The Niagara Escarpment, the same elevated rock formation that created the Niagara Falls, blocked access to Lake Erie.
What was the Erie Canal?
The Erie Canal was the beginning of a national transportation system, connecting ports on the Great Lakes with eastern markets. To reach into the Midwest, America needed canals built farther inland. Seeing the benefits of the Erie Canal, Ohio caught canal fever. By 1825, plans to link Lake Erie with the Ohio River were underway.
When was the Ohio & Erie Canal established?
The Ohio & Erie Canal became the spine of Cuyahoga Valley National Park, established in 1974 . In 1996, it also became the backbone of the new Ohio & Erie Canalway.
Why did the Ohio canals help the economy?
The Ohio & Erie Canal opened up Ohio and expanded America’s market economy .
How long did it take to build the Ohio & Erie Canal?
Using design specifications from the Erie Canal, construction on the Ohio & Erie Canal began throughout the state in 1825. It took two years of hand digging to complete the section from Cleveland to Akron, and five more years to finish all the sections.
How long did it take to get from Cleveland to Cincinnati?
By the fall of 1832, the canal promised passage from Cleveland to Cincinnati in 80 hours, a trip that had once taken weeks. The Moody and Thomas Mill in Peninsula. NPS Collection.
Where did the Ohio and Erie Canal go?
The Ohio & Erie Canal traveled through the Cuyahoga Valley on its way to connecting the Ohio River with Lake Erie. Wherever this man-made ditch went, change followed: change for the Cuyahoga Valley, the region, and the nation.
What river would supply the water for the canal?
At the divide’s highest point, today’s Summit County, the canal would need additional sources of water. The Cuyahoga River and the nearby Portage Lakes could supply that water.
Overview
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 Great Lakes, vastly reducing the costs of transporting people and goods across the Appalachians. In effect, the canal accelerated the settlement of the Great Lakes region, the westward expansion of the United States, and the economic ascendancy of New York State. It …
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 disus…
Background
Prior to the advent of railroads, water transport was the most cost-effective way to ship bulk goods. A mule can only carry about 250 pounds (110 kg), but can draw a barge weighing as much as 60,000 pounds (27,000 kg) along a towpath. In total, a canal could cut transport costs by about 95 percent.
In the early years of the United States, transportation of goods between the coastal ports and th…
Proposals and logistics
The idea of a canal to tie the East Coast to the new western settlements 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.
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…
Construction
The men who planned and oversaw construction were novices as surveyors and as engineers. There were no civil engineers in the United States. James Geddes and Benjamin Wright, who laid out the route, were judges whose experience in surveying was in settling boundary disputes. Geddes had only used a surveying instrument for a few hours before his work on the Canal. Canvass White was a 27-year-old amateur engineer who persuaded Clinton to let him go to Britain at his own ex…
Route
The canal began on the west side of the Hudson River at Albany, and ran north to Watervliet, where the Champlain Canal branched off. At Cohoes, it climbed the escarpment on the west side of the Hudson River—16 locks rising 140 feet (43 m)—and then turned west along the south shore of the Mohawk River, crossing to the north side at Crescent and again to the south at Rexford. The canal continued west near the south shore of the Mohawk River all the way to Rome, where the Moha…
Enlargements and improvements
Problems developed but were quickly solved. Leaks developed along the entire length of the canal, but these were sealed using cement that hardened underwater (hydraulic cement). Erosion on the clay bottom proved to be a problem and the speed was limited to 4 mph (6.4 km/h).
The original design planned for an annual tonnage of 1.5 million tons (1.36 mil…
Competition
As the canal brought travelers to New York City, it took business away from other ports such as Philadelphia and Baltimore. Those cities and their states started projects to compete with the Erie Canal. In Pennsylvania, the Main Line of Public Works was a combined canal and railroad running west from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh on the Ohio River, opened in 1834. In Maryland, the Ba…