George Washington proposed it, but Thomas Jefferson thought the timing was wrong. He said in a hundred years, maybe.
Was it possible for our new nation to create a superhighway of water across New York State with shovels and picks and wheelbarrows?
When a man named DeWitt Clinton lost the presidential election to James Madison in 1812, he started pushing for the Erie Canal in earnest. Becoming governor of New York helped quite a bit. With hand tools and an ingenious tree stump remover, men dug the “big ditch” 350 miles through the wilderness from Albany to Buffalo, connecting the Hudson River to the Great Lakes. At a cost of $7 million, it was completed in 1825; during the next ten years, tolls paid back the price.
Not only did the Erie Canal move goods to market, but people to the west. In one of his last letters, Jefferson realized, “This great work will immortalize the present authorities of New York, will bless descendants with wealth and prosperity, and prove to mankind the superior wisdom of employing the resources of industry in works of improvement rather than destruction.”
Railroads, autos, trucks and airlines have replaced this transportation wonder of the early Ninetenth Century. But the Erie Canal jumpstarted the American economy and gave thousands the chance to travel to new places to begin new lives.
Ohio and Indiana followed suit with their own canal system from Toledo to Evansville, after the Erie was built. However, there was not time to make up the millions that had been borrowed. The steam locomotive, the “iron horse,” took over. It is very notable that the Wabash and Erie Canal holds the distinction of being the second longest in the WORLD, only topped by the Grand Canal of China.
Hmmm. Might be a good subject for a book. Do you think? Let me know…I’m working on the notes now.