The Light on the Hudson

by Dana Ferry

published by Ithaca Press

The Benefits of the Erie Canal

Cadwallader Colden, George Washington, Jesse Hawley and DeWitt Clinton were all visionaries of a canal to the west from the Hudson River. And idea considered as early as 1724 was never fully realized until over one-hundred years later at the wedding of the waters of Lake Erie and the Atlantic Ocean, in 1825. The building of the Erie Canal was the cause of unity between the Atlantic states and the isolated West.

Spades scooped the earth, launching the canal construction on July 4, 1817, by Governor DeWitt Clinton, an unfaltering participant in the idea of the canal. The canal was dug four feet deep by forty feet wide, virtually by the hands and muscle of its laborers, and included a towpath for boats to be pulled by mules. Beasts of burden and blasting powder accompanied the laborers’ work through miles of unspoiled woods. The middle of the canal was located in Utica, New York. The construction began there and continued to the Hudson River and then from Utica to the west to finish in Buffalo. The Erie Canal included eighteen aqueducts and eighty-three locks, with a total elevation of 568 feet from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. The canal was completed on October 26, 1825.

Immediately upon the opening of the canal, towns like Syracuse and Albany sprouted into cities. The success of the “ditch” influenced the first steam railroad path in America. These railroads didn’t have the ability to transport weighty loads. As the “hoggee” (a boy boat driver) led the boat, this same freight glided effortlessly along the Canal, as it could ferry up to 30 tons. Mostly, the 363 mile waterway increased the development of the United States’ transportation and land and resources to the west were finally utilized.

The Erie Canal was expanded between 1836 and 1862. These improvements reduced the locks from 83 to 72, in addition to enlarging the canal path to seventy-feet wide by seven feet deep. The canal was transformed once again in 1903 by the state of New York. The “Barge Canal” accommodated barges hauling up to 3,000 tons of cargo.

Recreational boats channel the Erie Canal today. Barges loaded with cargo no longer cruise the canal. Built at a time when there were no engineering schools in the United States, the Erie Canal has been thought of as the 8th Wonder of the World. Cadwallader Colden and DeWitt Clinton knew there was a barrier to accessing the resources of the West without this waterway. These Mavericks’ tenacity and single-mindedness, achieved precisely one goal: the unification of the east and west, and thus the country has grown deliberately and steadily.

For more information on the Erie Canal, visit www.DanaFerry.com.