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The Erie Canal at 199
Today is the 199th anniversary of the opening of the Erie Canal. Here is a link to the Facebook post of the Canal Heritage Foundation commemorating the event.
I live five miles from the Canal and used to cross it every morning on my way to work. My home is made from Medina Sandstone—a remarkably durable building material—which was discovered when the Canal was coming through Medina. The Canal itself was a huge deal in its day, and it actually paid for itself within a year. The way it was built was very clever. Previous canal companies’ attempts to link Lake Champlain with the St. Lawrence River had failed miserably, so DeWitt Clinton developed a scheme where local contractors were hired to be responsible for segments of the Canal that ran through their regions. Judge Ellicott, who represented the Holland Land Company’s vast holdings in this area of New York, offered the services of his surveyors and mapmakers to the Canal effort—thereby guaranteeing that it would support communities set up on land he controlled. He was renowned for clever moves like giving free land to blacksmiths, tradesmen and innkeepers to plant new towns. He operated out of Batavia, about 15 miles from where I live.
I love to tell stories about the waves of European immigrants that came to NYC, up the Hudson, and out along the Canal. Irish folks did a lot of the heavy work and stayed in the canal towns, often building wonderful churches and impressive warehouses. The Remington company hit it big when the Canal opened as far as their rifle barrel shop in Ilion. Poles and Germans came to Buffalo, stayed, and grew cabbage and onion in the rich black soil known as the Mucklands. We are still blessed with their meats, sausages, and sauerkraut. North of the Canal, the woods were so thick it was called the Black North. As it was cleared, the exceptionally fertile soil in the Lake Plains and Niagara Escarpment was planted with apple, peach and cherry orchards; today it’s supplemented with wineries.
In 2016 I narrated Building the Empire State for University Press. I cringe when I listen to it now; I’ve gotten a lot better in the intervening years. But it’s still one of my favorites. It’s got characters like Aaron Burr, DeWitt Clinton, Fulton the steamboat man, and the aforementioned Ellicott. If you’d like a free copy to listen to, drop me a PM for a promo code. (If you write a review, have mercy.)
Published in General
I enjoy the drive along 90 on the eastern side. My trip normally would then go north into Canada over the 1000 Islands crossing. The geology is really interesting. You can see the layers of sandstone or shale poking out of the ground with very distinct layers. The wind-battered trees are thick and short. It’s probably different than your side of the lake. I can’t imagine how tough it would have been to tame that wilderness.
Digging a canal through that mess of rock seems almost impossible. They must have had to blast their way along the entire route.
T’wasnt easy. One of the best things to show visitors is the tour of the Lockport locks. The original design was the “Flight of Five” consecutive locks; today it’s just two. Several factories built to right next to the Locks to use the constant hydropower provided by the overflow channels.
I’ve taken that tour!
Celebrated in story and song . . .
Growing up in southern California and Florida, I was almost completely unaware of the Erie Canal until the year 2000 when we began considering a move to the Rochester, NY area (we did move to Webster, a bit east of Rochester along the shore of Lake Ontario, where we lived for 18 years).
As I was studying the area for the possible move I was thoroughly baffled by all the “-port” town names in the middle of New York state (i.e., not on the shores of Lake Erie or Lake Ontario). Fairport, Spencerport, Brockport, Middleport, Gasport, Lockport, etc. What’s with all these “ports” in the middle of the state? Only then did I begin to appreciate what the Erie Canal did for commerce in western New York.
Our son-in-law just last month bicycled a stretch of the Erie Canal from near its western terminus to I think near Spencerport. Our daughter followed driving the support van. The former tow path for the animals pulling the canal barges now are used as walking/bicycling paths that have the advantage of being mostly flat. The path is disconnected in a few places though.
A couple of lines from this song are part of a medley in the How The West Was Won soundtrack.
They say one reason America is blessed is that we have a mostly flat continent with many natural (and easily created) waterways. Manufacturing and farming are not big business without the ability to transport goods. The Erie Canal opened up all the Great Lakes area to international commerce.
I’m in Schenectady on a project and went over to Cohoes, NY to look at their falls on the Mohawk river. The parking lot is right next to an old lock of the Erie canal. I read that is was part of the “terrible sixteens” which took a complete day to traverse through all of the locks.
I went ahead and bought the the audible version of the book with your narration. Looking forward to it.
Picture of the falls
And they did it with 1817 technology.
Love the post!
What is the symbolism of pouring water out of the barrel in your two illustrations?
Most of the canals are in the North. Did the South not have canals or does the map have a regional focus?
I have a cousin, Frank Wilcox, who was a wonderful water color artist. He has a book on the Ohio Canals:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29369191-the-ohio-canals
It was the culminating ceremony of the opening of the Canal, called the Marriage of the Waters. A cask of salt water from the Atlantic was carried up the Hudson and through the Canal on the first boat to make the trip, then emptied into Lake Erie.
Impressive. Homesteaders followed the Ohio River in the days of Johnny Appleseed. John Chapman would collect apple seeds from cider mills in Pennsylvania, then float down the Ohio in a dugout canoe until he saw a place that looked to him like it would be a town in a few years. He would plant his seeds, and when homesteaders came through he would sell them tree seedlings. Part of the deal for homesteading was that you would plant an orchard of apple or peach trees, a requirement that helped keep speculators from buying up the land. Sice Johnny didn’t believe in grafting, and apples have tremendous genetic diversity, if you planted 12 trees you might get one that would produce fruit anyone would want to eat. The rest would be for cider; up until Prohibition, apples were something you drank.
It’s a nice feeling to have a post make it to the Main Feed in less than a day…thanks, y’all!
Growing up in eastern New Mexico (very near Texas) the construction of the Erie Canal was taught in elementary school, but I don’t think it was discussed much after that as I progressed through the New Mexico education system. Understandably perhaps, history there focused more on the Spanish Conquistadors and Texas’s war with Mexico against Santa Anna, before it sort of melds with the rest of the U.S. in the teaching of history from World War I on.
I didn’t realize what the impact of the Erie Canal was until I read a history of New York City, which did connect New York City’s economy to middle America, providing a more durable connection.
Well no. There is the Mississippi River that does connect the Northern and the Southern United States, east of the Rocky Mountains.
But a big reason the South (the old Confederacy) had a poorer economy than the North and maintained a separation culturally, including slavery, was they didn’t have the same network of rivers moving inland. And since there wasn’t a big natural lake to start from, building a canal in the early 1800’s wasn’t feasible.
To this day, moving goods by river or ocean is the cheapest form of transportation, considerably cheaper than trucks, rail, or air. Back then, waterborne trade was even more vital to the establishment of the U.S. economically.
I don’t know. Things are not as flat south of the Ohio river. Below is a fuller picture. There are 25,000 miles of inland waterways. The below map focuses on the Southeast USA.
For some time now the Erie Canal has been mostly recreational. In the 1960’s all the commercial traffic moved to the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Welland Canal that connects Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, so ships can go from the Atlantic Ocean all the way into the Great Lakes. This was a great thing for shipping, but terrible for Buffalo and all the towns along the canal that lost all that business.
Thank you for this! I immediately had that tune pop into my head when I saw this post. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard the whole song. I bet I learned some of it in my fourth grade class room because that teacher exposed us to so much music. This was 1962 in a one room school in a tiny place high in the Rocky Mountains. You’ve made an oldish lady quite happy!
The funny thing is the song is really about his mule Sal!
From Wikipedia:
“The Erie Canal was thus completed in eight years at a total length of 353 miles (568 km)[30] and cost $7.143 million (equivalent to $192 million in 2023).[31][32] It was acclaimed as an engineering marvel that united the country and helped New York City develop as an international trade center.”
Can you IMAGINE the time and cost it would take to build such a canal today?
When I heard that song it reminded me of elementary school also. I don’t remember what grade I was in but we had to learn and sing it for a play, or an ‘assembly’. This was more like 1972 for me. It was the same time we had an old lady come in and sit in her rocker and reminisce about Connie Mack.
The environmental impact studies would cost more than the canal.
Indeed. In many states it would not be possible to build such a canal at all. In California, they would probably just fill in the canal.
Funny you should mention it. But the Erie Canal had always played a pivotal roll in the Canadian Invasion of the US, and defeat of America… But after spending 2 hours writing this epic tale of bold military Champaign, I realized that it was the Hudson River. So never mind.