The Erie Canal

September 15, 1998

After the American Revolution, the United States had begun a westward expansion that would eventually lead it to the Pacific Ocean. In the early years of the republic, transportation to the west was a major problem. The Erie Canal, known as the highway to the new states, opened the door for people to move west easily, rather than using the difficult Appalachian mountain roads or shipping down the Mohawk Valley in small river boats. 

Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York State obtained approval from the legislature to build the Erie Canal in 1816. In 1817, farmers from western New York began the task of building the Erie Canal. It took eight years for several thousand workmen to clear the Erie Canal through from Buffalo to Albany. The hardest thing to build were the locks, which are used to raise and lower the boats to different water levels. Aqueducts, such as the 800-foot-long one over the Genesee River at Rochester, sometimes carried the canal above ground level. The engineers and the construction crews also had to overcome the obstacles of the swamps along the Mohawk River Valley. 

On April 21, 1820, the first passenger boat traveled from Rome west to Syracuse. In Fall 1825, the Seneca Chief started from Buffalo and went to New York Harbor with Governor Clinton aboard. By 1845, four thousand boats and 25,000 boatmen worked on the 425 mile long canal.