The roots of the Erie Canal stretch back more than two centuries, when pioneers conceived of a waterway across the New York wilderness. George Washington suggested it on a trip through the Mohawk Valley west of Albany in 1783.
The canal gained popular appeal after a man in debtor’s prison, Jesse Hawley, published a series of newspaper articles in support of the waterway.
“It is a splendid project and may be executed a century hence, but it is little short of madness to think of it at this day,” replied President Thomas Jefferson when asked in 1809 for federal aid to build the canal.
A year later, canal supporters enlisted the aid of DeWitt Clinton, an aristocratic politician who became the Erie’s greatest proponent. Detractors called the canal “Clinton’s Ditch” or “Clinton’s Folly,” claiming it couldn’t be done.
Clinton became New York governor in 1817, the year canal digging began in Rome, near the center of New York.
It was America’s first great public works project, costing $7 million. Dug by horse and manpower, the canal was considered an engineering marvel.
A series of 82 locks lifted boats up the 500-foot elevation between Albany and Buffalo. In Lockport, north of Buffalo, 10 locks were blasted out of the rock that formed the Niagara Falls escarpment, five locks lifting westbound boats, and five lowering eastbound ones.
“Comparatively, the canal was probably our biggest project, except for the atom bomb, heaven help us,” said novelist Walter Edmonds, who grew up near the canal. Edmonds, 90, wrote “Rome Haul,” “Drums Along the Mohawk” and other novels set on New York waterways.
On Oct. 26, 1825, Clinton led a flotilla of canal boats east from Buffalo toward New York City, the first trip on the Erie. In New York harbor, Clinton dumped two barrels of Lake Erie water, proclaiming it the “wedding of the waters” between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean.
The original Erie was 40 feet wide and 4 feet deep, but by the mid-1800s, it was widened to 70 feet and deepened to 7 feet.
In the early 1900s, motorized barges replaced the mules that once tugged canal boats. The Erie was widened to its present 120 feet and deepened to 12 feet. The canal was rerouted in places to follow the paths of rivers such as the Mohawk, and a new system of 35 locks replaced the old ones.
The Erie reduced shipping costs from New York City to the Great Lakes to a few dollars a ton from $100 by land and cut travel time across the state to days from weeks.
