Erie Canal - WikiHQ

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

thumb|alt=Relief map of New York State.|The [[Mohawk Valley, running east and west, cuts a natural path between the Catskill Mountains to the south and the Adirondack Mountains to the north.]]

thumb|A map of the Erie Canal

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. 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 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. 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. 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

thumb|upright=0.75|[[Portrait of DeWitt Clinton by Rembrandt Peale, 1823. Clinton was Governor of New York and a champion of the canal]]

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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, 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. 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". In 1817, though, Clinton received approval from the legislature for $7 million for construction.

thumb|center|upright=4.1|Profile of the original canal|alt=Elevation drawing of the canal's length

Construction

thumb|right|Aqueduct over the [[Mohawk River at Rexford, one of 32 navigable aqueducts on the Erie Canal|alt=Black-and-white photo of aqueduct over curve in canal]]

thumb|right|Stonework of lock abandoned because of route change, at [[Durhamville, New York]]

thumb|upright=0.75|An original five-step lock structure crossing the [[Niagara Escarpment at Lockport, now without gates and used as a cascade for excess water]]

The original canal was long, from Albany on the Hudson to Buffalo on Lake Erie. The channel was cut wide and deep, with removed soil piled on the downhill side to form a walkway known as a towpath. 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.

The remaining problem was finding labor; increased immigration helped fill the need. Many of the laborers working on the canal were Irish, who had recently come to the United States as a group of about 5,000. Most of them were Roman Catholic, a religion that raised much suspicion in early America because of its hierarchic structure, and many laborers on the canal suffered violent assault as the result of misjudgment and xenophobia. However, recent research has revealed that the death toll was likely much lower, as no contemporary reports mention significant worker mortality, and mass graves from the period have never been found in the area. Work continued on the downhill side towards the Hudson, and the crews worked on the section across the swampland when it froze in winter.

The middle section from Utica to Salina (Syracuse) was completed in 1820, and traffic on that section started up immediately. Expansion to the east and west proceeded simultaneously, and the whole eastern section, from Brockport to Albany, opened on September 10, 1823, to great fanfare. The Champlain Canal, a separate but connected north–south route from Watervliet on the Hudson to Lake Champlain, opened on the same date.

After Montezuma Marsh, the next difficulties were crossing Irondequoit Creek and the Genesee River near Rochester. The former ultimately required building the long "Great Embankment", to carry the canal at a height of above the level of the creek, which ran through a culvert underneath. The canal crossed the river on a stone aqueduct, long and wide, supported by 11 arches.

In 1823 construction reached the Niagara Escarpment, an wall of hard dolomitic limestone. The route followed the channel of a creek that had cut a ravine steeply down the escarpment. The construction and operation of two sets of five locks along a corridor soon gave rise to the community of Lockport. The lift-locks had a total lift of , exiting into a deeply cut channel. The final leg had to be cut deep through another limestone mass, the Onondaga ridge. Much of that section was blasted with black powder, and the inexperience of the crews often led to accidents, and sometimes to rocks falling on nearby homes.

Two villages competed to be the terminus: Black Rock, on the Niagara River, and Buffalo, at the eastern tip of Lake Erie. Buffalo expended great energy to widen and deepen Buffalo Creek to make it navigable and to create a harbor at its mouth. Buffalo won over Black Rock, and grew into a large city, eventually annexing its former rival.

Completion

thumb|upright=0.75|Keg poured in the "Wedding of the Waters"

In 1824, before the canal was completed, a detailed Pocket Guide for the Tourist and Traveler, Along the Line of the Canals, and the Interior Commerce of the State of New York, was published for the benefit of travelers and land speculators.

The entire canal was officially completed on October 26, 1825.

The Erie Canal was thus completed in eight years at a total length of and cost $7.143 million (equivalent to $ million in ). It was acclaimed as an engineering marvel that united the country and helped New York City develop as an international trade center. An ambitious program to improve the canal began in 1834, partially as a result of the need for repairs to infrastructure, but mostly because of extreme crowding particularly on the eastern portion of the canal. During this massive series of construction projects, known as the First Enlargement, the canal was widened from and deepened from . Locks were widened, doubled, or rebuilt in new locations, and many new navigable aqueducts were constructed. The canal was straightened and slightly re-routed in some stretches, resulting in the abandonment of short segments of the original 1825 canal. The First Enlargement was declared to be completed in 1862 after economic struggles, with further minor enlargements in later decades.

Railroad competition

thumb|Map of the "Water Level Routes" of the [[New York Central Railroad (purple), West Shore Railroad (red) and Erie Canal (blue)]]

The Mohawk and Hudson Railroad opened in 1837, providing a bypass to the slowest part of the canal between Albany and Schenectady. Other railroads were soon chartered and built to continue the line west to Buffalo, and in 1842 a continuous line (which later became the New York Central Railroad and its Auburn Road in 1853) was open the whole way to Buffalo. As the railroad served the same general route as the canal, but provided for faster travel, passengers soon switched to it. However, as late as 1852, the canal carried thirteen times more freight tonnage than all the railroads in New York State combined. The New York, West Shore and Buffalo Railway was completed in 1884, as a route running closely parallel to both the canal and the New York Central Railroad. However, it went bankrupt and was acquired the next year by the New York Central.

In 1880s, the canal was struggling to remain competitive with the railroads. The NY State Legislature passed an amendment to the state constitution allowing for the end of toll on the canal in 1881 and 1882. In 1882, the amendment was approved by voters, and on January 1, 1883, the new amendment went into effect, ending the charging of tolls along the NY State canals.

Barge Canal

thumb|right|Two [[lift bridges in Lockport, New York, July 2010]]

thumb|right|The modern Erie Canal has 34 locks, which are painted with the blue and gold colors of the [[New York State Canal System.]]

In a November 3, 1903 referendum, a majority of New Yorkers authorized an expansion of the canal at a cost of $101,000,000.

In 1905, construction of the New York State Barge Canal began, which was completed in 1918, at a cost of $96.7 million. In sections that did not consist of canalized rivers This expensive expansion project was politically unpopular in parts of the state not served by the canal.

Commercial decline

Freight traffic reached a total of 5.2 million short tons (4.7 million metric tons) by 1951. The growth of railroads and highways across the state, and the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, caused commercial traffic on the canal to decline dramatically during the second half of the 20th century. Since the 1990s, the canal system has been used primarily by recreational traffic.

New York State Canal System

In 1992, the New York State Barge Canal was renamed the New York State Canal System (including the Erie, Cayuga-Seneca, Oswego, and Champlain canals) and placed under the newly created New York State Canal Corporation, a subsidiary of the New York State Thruway Authority. While part of the Thruway, the canal system was operated using money generated by Thruway tolls. In 2017, the New York State Canal Corporation was transferred from the New York State Thruway to the New York Power Authority.

In 2000, Congress designated the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor, covering of navigable water from Lake Champlain to the Capital Region and west to Buffalo. The area has a population of 2.7 million; about 75% of Central and Western New York's population lives within of the Erie Canal.

There were some 42 commercial shipments on the canal in 2008, compared to 15 such shipments in 2007 and more than 33,000 shipments in 1855, the canal's peak year. The new growth in commercial traffic is due to the rising cost of diesel fuel. Canal barges can carry a short ton of cargo on one gallon of diesel fuel, while a gallon allows a train to haul the same amount of cargo and a truck . Canal barges can carry loads up to , and are used to transport objects that would be too large for road or rail shipment. In 2012, the New York State Canal System as a whole was used to ship 42,000 tons of cargo.

Route

Original Canal

The Erie made use of the favorable conditions of New York's unique topography, which provided that area with the only break in the Appalachians south of the St. Lawrence River. The Hudson is tidal to Troy, and Albany is west of the Appalachians. It allowed for east–west navigation from the coast to the Great Lakes within US territory.

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 —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 Mohawk turns north.

Passenger boats

thumb|Nearing the Bend, a nostalgic image of early canal travel by [[Edward Lamson Henry, ]]

Packet boats, serving passengers exclusively, reached speeds of up to and ran at much more frequent intervals than the cramped, bumpy stagecoach wagons. These boats, measuring up to long and wide, made ingenious use of space, accommodating up to 40 passengers at night and up to three times as many in the daytime.

The canal made an immense contribution to the wealth and importance of New York City, Buffalo and New York State. Its impact went much further, increasing trade throughout the nation by opening eastern and overseas markets to Midwestern farm products and by enabling migration to the West. The port of New York became essentially the Atlantic home port for all of the Midwest. New York State's initial loan for the original canal was paid by 1837.

Migratory impact

New ethnic Irish communities formed in some towns along its route after completion, as Irish immigrants were a large portion of the construction labor force. A plaque honoring the canal's construction is located in Battery Park in southern Manhattan.

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.

The canal allowed Buffalo to grow from just 200 settlers in 1820 to more than 18,000 people by 1840.

Cultural impact

thumb|upright=0.75|1913 sheet music cover of "[[Low Bridge|Low Bridge, Everybody Down"]]

The Canal helped bind the still-new nation closer to Britain and Europe. Repeal of Britain's Corn Law resulted in a huge increase in exports of Midwestern wheat to Britain. Trade between the United States and Canada increased as a result of the repeal and a reciprocity (free-trade) agreement signed in 1854. Much of this trade flowed along the Erie.

Its success prompted imitation: a rash of canal-building followed. Also, the many technical hurdles that had to be overcome made heroes of those whose innovations made the canal possible. This led to an increased public esteem for practical education. Chicago, among other Great Lakes cities, recognized the importance of the canal to its economy, and two West Loop streets are named "Canal" and "Clinton", for canal proponent DeWitt Clinton.

Concern that erosion caused by logging in the Adirondacks could silt up the canal contributed to the creation in 1885 of another New York National Historic Landmark, the Adirondack Park.

Many notable authors wrote about the canal, including Herman Melville, Frances Trollope, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Samuel Hopkins Adams and the Marquis de Lafayette, and many tales and songs were written about life on the canal. The popular song "Low Bridge, Everybody Down" by Thomas S. Allen was written in 1905 to memorialize the canal's early heyday, when barges were pulled by mules rather than engines.

Consisting of a massive stone aqueduct that carried boats over incredible cascades, Little Falls was one of the most popular stops for American and foreign tourists. This is shown in Scene 4 of William Dunlap's play A Trip to Niagara, where he depicts the general preference of tourists to travel by canal so that they could experience a combination of artificial and natural sights.

The canal today

thumb|A commercial tour boat locks through [[Baldwinsville, New York|Baldwinsville's Lock 24]]

thumb|MV Grande Caribe traversing the canal on an overnight cruise in 2014

Today, the Erie Canal is used primarily by recreational vessels, though it remains served by several commercial barge-towing companies.

The canal is open to small craft and some larger vessels from May through November each year. During winter, water is drained from parts of the canal for maintenance. The Champlain Canal, Lake Champlain, and the Chambly Canal, and Richelieu River in Canada form the Lakes to Locks Passage, making a tourist attraction of the former waterway linking eastern Canada to the Erie Canal. In 2006 recreational boating fees were suspended to attract more visitors.

The Erie Canal is a destination for tourists from all over the world, and has inspired guidebooks dedicated to exploration of the waterway. An Erie Canal Cruise company, based in Herkimer, operates from mid-May until mid-October with daily cruises. The cruise goes through the history of the canal and also takes passengers through Lock 18.

Aside from transportation, numerous businesses, farms, factories and communities alongside its banks still utilize the canal's waters for other purposes such as irrigation for farmland, hydroelectricity, research, industry, and even drinking. Use of the canal system has an estimated total economic impact of $6.2 billion annually.

Sections of the Old Erie Canal not used after 1918 are owned by New York State, or have been ceded to or purchased by counties or municipalities. Many stretches of the old canal have been filled in to create roads such as Erie Boulevard in Syracuse and Schenectady, and Broad Street and the Rochester Subway in Rochester. A 36‑mile (58 km) stretch of the old canal from the town of DeWitt, New York, east of Syracuse, to just outside Rome, New York, is preserved as the Old Erie Canal State Historic Park. In 1960 the Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site, a section of the canal in Montgomery County, was one of the first sites recognized as a National Historic Landmark.

Some municipalities have preserved sections as town or county canal parks, or have plans to do so. Camillus Erie Canal Park preserves a stretch and has restored Nine Mile Creek Aqueduct, built in 1841 as part of the First Enlargement of the canal. In some communities, the old canal has refilled with overgrowth and debris. Proposals have been made to rehydrate the old canal through downtown Rochester or Syracuse as a tourist attraction. In Syracuse, the location of the old canal is represented by a reflecting pool in downtown's Clinton Square and the downtown hosts a canal barge and weigh lock structure, now dry. Buffalo's Commercial Slip is the restored and re-watered segment of the canal which formed its "Western Terminus".

In 2004, the administration of New York Governor George Pataki was criticized when officials of New York State Canal Corporation attempted to sell private development rights to large stretches of the Old Erie Canal to a single developer for $30,000, far less than the land was worth on the open market. After an investigation by the Syracuse Post-Standard newspaper, the Pataki administration nullified the deal.

Parks and museums

thumb|[[Erie Canal Lock 52 Complex|Old Erie Canal Lock 52 in Port Byron]]

thumb|[[Old Erie Canal State Historic Park in DeWitt]]

Parks and museums related to the Old Erie Canal include (listed from east to west):

Day Peckinpaugh ship; restoration and conversion to a floating museum was planned for completion in 2012 by the New York State Museum
Watervliet Side Cut Locks, located at Watervliet and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971
Cohoes Falls Park, 231 N. Mohawk St., Cohoes, New York, offers, looking away from the river, a dramatic view of abandoned and dry Erie Canal lock 18, high above.
Enlarged Double Lock No. 23, Old Erie Canal, Rotterdam
Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site at Fort Hunter
Old Erie Canal State Historic Park, 36-mile linear park from Rome to DeWitt
Erie Canal Village, near Rome
Canastota Canal Town Museum, Canastota
Chittenango Landing Canal Boat Museum, near Chittenango
Erie Canal Museum in downtown Syracuse
Camillus Erie Canal Park in Camillus
Jordan Canal Park in Jordan, town of Elbridge
Enlarged Double Lock No. 33 Old Erie Canal, St. Johnsville
Erie Canal Lock 52 Complex, a national historic district located within the Old Erie Canal Heritage Park at Port Byron and Mentz in Cayuga County; listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998

Locks

thumb|An upstream view of the downstream lock at Lock 32, [[Pittsford (village), New York|Pittsford, New York]]

thumb|The modern single lock at the [[Niagara Escarpment]]

The following list of locks is provided for the current canal, from east to west. There are a total of 36 (35 numbered) locks on the Erie Canal.

All locks on the New York State Canal System are single-chamber; the dimensions are long and wide with a minimum depth of water over the miter sills at the upstream gates upon lift. They can accommodate a vessel up to long and wide. Overall sidewall height will vary by lock, ranging between depending on the lift and navigable stages. Lock E17 at Little Falls has the tallest sidewall height at .

Distance is based on position markers from an interactive canal map provided online by the New York State Canal Corporation and may not exactly match specifications on signs posted along the canal. Mean surface elevations are comprised from a combination of older canal profiles and history books as well as specifications on signs posted along the canal. The margin of error should normally be within .

The Waterford Flight series of locks (comprising Locks E2 through E6) is one of the steepest in the world, lifting boats in less than .