Erie Canal

The Erie Canal, a historic waterway in upstate New York, connects the Hudson River to Lake Erie, running east to west. When it opened in 1825, it became the first navigable route linking the Atlantic Ocean to the upper Great Lakes above Niagara Falls. This drastically lowered the cost of moving people and goods over the Appalachian Mountains, speeding up settlement in the Great Lakes region, pushing westward expansion, and boosting New York State’s economy.

The idea of a canal from the Hudson to the Great Lakes emerged in the 1780s, but a formal survey didn’t happen until 1808. The New York State Legislature gave the go-ahead in 1817. Critics, mocking its main backer Governor DeWitt Clinton, called it “Clinton’s Folly” and “Clinton’s Big Ditch.” Yet the canal was an instant success after its opening on October 26, 1825; tolls paid off the state’s construction debt within a year. This westward link gave New York City a major edge over other U.S. ports and spurred growth in cities like Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo.

Building the Erie Canal was a landmark engineering feat in early U.S. history. At 363 miles (584 km) long, it was the world’s second-longest canal, behind only China’s Grand Canal. Originally 40 feet (12 m) wide and 4 feet (1.2 m) deep, it underwent several expansions, most notably from 1905 to 1918 when the “Barge Canal” was built and over half the original route was abandoned. Today’s canal stretches 351 miles (565 km), is 120 feet (37 m) wide and 12 feet (3.7 m) deep, and has 35 locks. Among them is the Waterford Flight, the steepest lock system in the United States. Boats leaving the canal must also pass through the Black Rock Lock to reach Lake Erie or the Troy Federal Lock to enter the tidal Hudson. The total elevation change is about 565 feet (172 m).

The canal’s busiest year was 1855, with 33,000 commercial shipments. It held its own against railroads until around 1902, when tolls were eliminated. Commercial traffic dropped sharply in the late 1900s, squeezed by trucking on the new Interstate Highway System and the larger St. Lawrence Seaway, which opened in 1959. The last regular commercial hauler, the *Day Peckinpaugh*, stopped running in 1994.

Nowadays, the Erie Canal is mostly used by recreational boats. It links the three other canals in the New York State Canal System: the Champlain, Oswego, and Cayuga–Seneca. Some long-distance boaters include it as part of the Great Loop route. The canal has also become a tourist draw, with many parks and museums dedicated to its history. The New York State Canalway Trail, a popular cycling path, follows the canal across the state. In 2000, Congress created the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor to protect and promote the system.

It’s worth noting that the waterway called the Erie Canal today is quite different from the 19th-century version. More than half of the original canal was destroyed or abandoned during the early 1900s construction of the New York State Barge Canal. The surviving sections, mostly west of Syracuse, were widened, bridges rebuilt, and locks replaced. It was known as the Barge Canal at the time, but that name faded as commercial traffic disappeared and recreational use grew in the later 20th century.

Before railroads, water transport was the cheapest way to move bulk goods. A mule could carry only about 250 pounds (110 kg) but could pull a barge weighing up to 60,000 pounds (27,000 kg) along a towpath, cutting transport costs by roughly 95 percent. In the early U.S., moving goods between coastal ports and the interior was slow and tough. Rivers near the coast offered easy travel up to the fall line, but the Appalachian Mountains—stretching 1,500 miles (2,400 km) from Maine to Alabama—posed a huge barrier, with only five places where mule trains or wagon roads could cross. Passengers and freight heading west had to go overland on rough roads. In 1800, it took about 2½ weeks to travel from New York to Cleveland, Ohio (460 miles; 740 km), and 4 weeks to Detroit (612 miles; 985 km).

The main export from the Ohio Valley was grain, a high-volume, low-price product. Often, shipping it to distant markets wasn’t worth the cost, which led farmers to turn grain into whiskey for easier transport and higher profits—a factor in the Whiskey Rebellion. By the 18th and early 19th centuries, coastal residents realized that any city or state that built a cheap, reliable route to the West would thrive economically, and the port at the route’s seaward end would boom. Projects were soon proposed in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and other coastal states.

The Mohawk River, a tributary of the Hudson, rises near Lake Ontario and flows through a glacial meltwater channel just north of the Catskill Mountains, separating them from the Adirondacks. The Mohawk and Hudson valleys provide the only break in the Appalachians north of Alabama, making a navigable canal through the Mohawk Valley a natural choice.