what waterway connects the erie canal to new york city

Canal History

The New York State Canal Arrangement is non simply rich in history, merely also culture. Many immigrants worked long and hard on "Clinton'southward Ditch" to create this magnificent waterway. Sociology, songs and voice communication lingo emerged from those individuals working along the Canal. Every bit the population grew and the Canal prospered, information technology became not only a transportation waterway, but likewise a holiday area for the well-to-exercise.

At one time, more than fifty,000 people depended on the Erie Canal for their livelihood.  From its inception, the Erie Canal helped form a whole new culture revolving around culvert life. For many, canal boats became floating houses, traveling from boondocks to town. The father would serve as captain, while the mother cooked for the family and crew and the children, if old plenty, would serve as "hoggees" and would walk alongside the mules to lead them along at a steady stride.

For those who traveled along the Canal in packet boats or rider vessels, the Culvert was an exciting place. Gambling and entertainment were frequent pastimes on the Canal and often, families would run into each year at the same locations to share stories and adventures.

Today, the Canal has returned to its quondam glory and is filled with pleasure boats, fishermen and cyclists riding the former towpaths where mules in one case trod.  The excitement of the past is live and well.

The Erie Canal: A Brief History

"Traveling on the Erie Canal"
The original Illustration was taken from Graham's Magazine, 1828. The source prototype was Handset and Letterpress Printed at the Printing Role of the Farmers' Museum, Cooperstown, NY.

Begun in 1817 and opened in its entirety 1825, the Erie Canal is considered the engineering curiosity of the 19th Century. When the federal government concluded that the project was likewise ambitious to undertake, the Land of New York took on the chore of carving 363 miles of canal through the wilderness with nothing but the muscle power of men and horses.

Once derided every bit "Clinton'south Folly" for the Governor who lent his vision and political muscle to the project, the Erie Canal experienced unparalleled success almost overnight.  The iconic waterway established settlement patterns for nearly of the United States during the 19th century, fabricated New York the financial capital of the world, provided a disquisitional supply line which helped the North win the Ceremonious State of war, and precipitated a series of social and economic changes throughout a young America.

Explorers had long searched for a water road to the west.  Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the lack of an efficient, rubber transportation network kept populations - and merchandise - largely confined to coastal areas.  At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Allegheny Mountains were the Western Frontier. The Northwest Territories that would afterwards go Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio were rich in timber, minerals, and fertile country for farming. Information technology took weeks to reach these precious resources.  Travelers were faced with rutted turnpike roads that broiled to hardness in the summertime sun.  In the winter, the roads dissolved in a sea of mud.

An imprisoned flour merchant named Jesse Hawley envisioned a better way: a Canal from Buffalo on the eastern shore of Lake Erie to Albany on the upper Hudson River, a distance of almost 400 miles.  Long a proponent of efficient water transportation, Hawley had gone bankrupt trying to go his production to market from what is now Rochester.  Sent to debtor'due south prison every bit a upshot, Hawley wrote a series of essays which were published in the Genesee Messenger beginning in 1807, describing in great detail the road, costs, and benefits of what would go the Erie Canal.

Hawley'southward essays caught the eye of Assemblyman Joshua Forman, who submitted the commencement Land legislation related to the Erie Culvert in 1808, calling for a serial of surveys to be made examining the practicality of a water route between Lake Erie and the Hudson River.  Forman fifty-fifty traveled to Washington to make a case for federal support for the Canal, at which point Thomas Jefferson described the proposal as "a fiddling short of madness."

In 1810, Thomas Boil, Treasurer of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company and Country Senator Jonas Platt, hoping to go plans for the Canal moving forwards, approached influential Senator De Witt Clinton -- old mayor of New York City and a rising political star -- to enlist his support.  On March 13th, a measure out was introduced in the State Senate naming a Canal Commission and directing the commissioners to survey a road for the Culvert which would connect the Hudson River to the Dandy Lakes.  With Clinton's support, the measure passed, and the Erie Canal era had begun.

Though Clinton had been recruited to the Canal try by Eddy and Platt, he quickly became one of the Culvert'due south nearly active supporters, and went on to tie his very political fate to the success of the Canal.  Today, De Witt Clinton and the story of the Erie Culvert are inextricably linked, and there is no doubt that Governor Clinton grasped at the time the revolutionary touch on the Canal would have once it opened:

"The urban center will, in the course of time, become the granary of the world, the emporium of commerce, the seat of articles, the focus of great moneyed operations," said Clinton.  "And before the revolution of a century, the whole island of Manhattan, covered with inhabitants and replenished with a dense population, will constitute one vast metropolis."

Though the State of war of 1812 created a lengthy interruption in the project'southward progress, Clinton and his young man Canal proponents continued to piece of work to build support for the waterway.   In 1816, every bit a sitting Culvert Commissioner, DeWitt Clinton submitted a formal petition to a articulation committee of the New York Land Senate and Assembly to create a canal system between the Hudson River and Lake Erie.  This document, known as the "New York Memorial", generated a series of public meetings in back up of the Canal's construction and effectively began the movement in the state to build the waterway.  Ultimately, over one hundred thousand New Yorkers would sign the petition, helping to build a ground dandy of public support for the project.

On Apr 15th, 1817, the New York State Legislature finally approved structure of the Erie Canal, which Jesse Hawley had written and then compellingly virtually just a decade earlier.  The beak authorized $7 million for construction of the 363-mile long waterway, which was to be 40 anxiety wide and four feet deep.  Structure would brainstorm on July 4th, in Rome, NY and would take viii years.  Also in 1817, Clinton would leverage his success championing the Canal'south structure into the Governor's office, his election culminating his meteoric political rise over the years.

The completion of the Erie Canal spurred the first neat westward motility of American settlers, gave access to the rich land and resources west of the Appalachians and made New York the preeminent commercial urban center in the United States.

"The Spousal relationship of the Waters"
A mural decoration in the DeWitt Clinton High School, New York Metropolis, showing a scene connected with the ceremony of opening the Erie Culvert in 1825. - Copyright 1905, C.Y. Turner

In 1825, Governor Dewitt Clinton officially opened the Erie Canal equally he sailed the package boat Seneca Master along the Canal from Buffalo to Albany.  Subsequently traveling from the mouth of the Erie to New York Metropolis, he emptied two casks of water from Lake Erie into the Atlantic Body of water, celebrating the first connection of waters from East to Due west in the ceremonial "Wedding of the Waters".

The effect of the Culvert was both firsthand and dramatic, and settlers poured westward.  The explosion of merchandise prophesied past Governor Clinton began, spurred by freight rates from Buffalo to New York of $10 per ton by Culvert, compared with $100 per ton past road.  In 1829, there were iii,640 bushels of wheat transported down the Canal from Buffalo.  By 1837 this figure had increased to 500,000 bushels; four years later it reached one million. In nine years, Canal tolls more recouped the unabridged cost of construction.

Within fifteen years of the Canal'due south opening, New York was the busiest port in America, moving tonnages greater than Boston, Baltimore and New Orleans combined.

The touch on on the rest of the State can be seen by looking at a modernistic map.  With the exception of Binghamton and Elmira, every major city in New York falls along the trade route established past the Erie Culvert, from New York City to Albany, through Schenectady, Utica and Syracuse, to Rochester and Buffalo.  Virtually eighty% of upstate New York's population lives within 25 miles of the Erie Canal.

The Erie Canal'due south success was part of a Culvert-building boom in New York in the 1820s. Betwixt 1823 and 1828, several lateral Canals opened including the Champlain, the Oswego and the Cayuga-Seneca.

Between 1835 and the plough of the century, this network of Canals was enlarged twice to arrange heavier traffic.  Betwixt 1905 and 1918, the Canals were enlarged again. This time, in guild to adjust much larger barges, the engineers decided to abandon much of the original man-made channel and use new techniques to "Canalize" the rivers that the canal had been constructed to avert the Mohawk, Oswego, Seneca, Clyde and Oneida Lake.  A uniform channel was dredged; dams were built to create long, navigable pools, and locks were built next to the dams to allow the barges to pass from ane pool to the next.

With growing competition from railroads and highways, and the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, commercial traffic on the Canal System declined dramatically in the latter role of the 20th century.

Today, the waterway network has been renamed once again.  As the New York State Canal System, it is enjoying a rebirth every bit a recreational and historic resource. The Erie Culvert played an integral office in the transformation of New York City into the nation's leading port, a national identity that continues to exist reflected in many songs, legends and artwork today.

The Story of the New York Country Canals

The account of the history of the Erie Canal and the "lateral" canals, as referenced by Roy Finch, was written in 1925 in commemoration of the 1-hundredth anniversary of the Erie Culvert. Mr. Finch was employed with the New York State Engineer and Surveyor, a defunct governmental agency that managed the Canal System from the 1850's to the mid-1900'southward. He was intrigued by the canals and, in celebration of the birth of the canal, idea information technology useful to share his knowledge and experience with all.

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Source: https://www.canals.ny.gov/history/history.html

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