How did the Erie Canal which was finished in 1825 improve trade between New York City and the Midwest?

Built between 1817 and 1825, the original Erie Canal traversed 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo. It was the longest artificial waterway and the greatest public works project in North America.

The canal put New York on the map as the Empire State—the leader in population, industry, and economic strength. It transformed New York City into the nation's principal seaport and opened the interior of North America to settlement.

Equally important, the Erie Canal became a central element forging our national identity. Built with a combination of vision, determination, ingenuity, and hard work, the Erie Canal solidified these central elements of our American character.

New York's canal system was a nationally and internationally significant work of engineering. Although its builders borrowed and adapted ideas and techniques from earlier European canals, they applied them with audacity on an unprecedented scale.

Originally four feet deep and 40 feet wide, the Erie Canal cut through fields, forests, rocky cliffs, and swamps; crossed rivers on aqueducts; and overcame hills with 83 lift locks. The project engineers and contractors had little experience building canals, so this massive project served as the nation's first practical school of civil engineering.

Some laborers were Irish immigrants, but most were U.S.-born. For eight years of wet, heat, and cold, they felled trees and excavated, mostly by hand and animal power, mile after mile. They devised equipment to uproot trees and pull stumps and developed hydraulic cement that hardened under water. With hand drills and black powder they blasted rocks. Their ingenuity and labor made the Erie Canal the engineering and construction triumph of its day.

Canal packet boat passengers traveled in relative comfort from Albany to Buffalo in five days—not two weeks in crowded stagecoaches. Freight rates fell 90 percent compared to shipping by ox-drawn wagon. Freight boats carried Midwestern produce from Buffalo to Albany. Most continued on to New York City's seaport, towed down the Hudson River in fleets behind steam tugboats. Mid-western farmers, loggers, miners, and manufacturers found new access to lucrative far-flung markets.

The Erie Canal became known as the "Mother of Cities" because it gave rise to so many cities, towns, and villages.

The Erie Canal and a system of connecting waterways fulfilled DeWitt Clinton's prophecy that New York would be America's preeminent state, populated from border to border and generating wealth for itself and the nation. Soon New York City was the nation's busiest port, most populous city, and foremost seat of commerce and finance. Immigrants knew they could find work there and in many new cities sprouting along the canal.

As it opened the American interior to settlement, the canal brought a flow of people and new ideas. Social reform movements like abolitionism and women's suffrage, Utopian communities, and various religious movements thrived in the canal corridor. The Erie Canal carried more westbound immigrants than any other trans-Appalachian canal. These newcomers infused the nation with different languages, customs, practices, and religions.

Floating Ideas:
How the Erie Canal Shaped America

This half-hour documentary examines the spread of ideas along the Erie Canal, with an emphasis on women's rights, the right to vote, and the quest for social justice.

The U.S. Congress recognized the Erie Canal's significance to our nation by establishing the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor in 2000. The Corridor stretches 524 miles across the full expanse of upstate New York, from Buffalo to Albany and north along the ChamplainCanal to Whitehall. It threads more than 200 communities connected by a waterway that changed not just the landscape of our state, but also our nation and its history.

National Historic Landmark

Thanks to the dedication of generations of canal workers and the support of people like you, the NYS Canal System remains one of America's greatest treasures.

Infrastructure

New York City (NYC)
The Erie Canal (1825)

IIn the early 1800's the idea of carving 363-mile long canal to connect the Hudson River to the Great lakes seemed like madness, yet there had always been a desire among the people to build an efficient mode of transportation between these two regions. Until the building of the Erie Canal, traders confined themselves to coastal areas, unable to take advantage of the abundant resources available in the areas surrounding the Great Lakes. The idea for the Erie Canal first occurred to a bankrupt flour merchant by the name of Jesse Hawley: due to the lack of efficient transportation he was not able to make enough money to continue his business, and was sent to debtor's prison as a result. There, Hawley worked on a series of essays, in which he described in detail the benefits of building such a canal. In 1807 his papers on the Erie Canal were published in the Genesee Messenger, a local newspaper. Hawley's ideas inspired several important people, two of whom were Thomas Eddy and Jonas Platt. Thomas Eddy was the treasurer of the West Inland Lock Navigation Company and Jonas Platt was the New York State Senator. Together these two men approached the former mayor of New York, Senator De Witt Clinton, to ask for support for Erie Canal. In 1816 De Witt Clinton, drafted the 'New York Memorial', a petition for building the Erie Canal. With the support of 100,000 New Yorkers, De Witt Clinton was confident in the public support of this project. A year later, the New York state legislature approved the proposal, granting a $7 million budget to the project. The construction of the Erie Canal was completed under budget and ahead of schedule; it was an immediate economic success. The Erie Canal reduced shipping time from New York to Buffalo from three weeks, to just 8 days. The cost of shipping a ton of cargo from New York to Buffalo dropped from $90 to $4, bolstering trade along the Erie Canal. The eight year project began on July 4, 1817 in Rome, which is located in east central New York State. The canal would provide a continuous waterway from Hudson River to the Great lakes, thereby opening up the Great lakes region and the Midwest to waterborne shipping. Upon its completion the canal would be 363-miles long, forty feet wide and only four feet deep. Although the Erie Canal brought prosperity and industry to its neighboring regions, it had certain limitations, which would have to be addressed later in time. For instance, the first boats that journeyed across the canal were limited to carrying only 30 tons of cargo due to the shallowness of the canal. In 1836 and 1862, the Erie Canal was expanded both in width and in depth to accommodate bigger and heavier ships. It was then 70 feet wide, and seven feet deep. After its enlargement, the Erie Canal was able accommodate boats carrying 270 tons of cargo. The 566 ft. rise in elevation from Hudson River to Lake Erie can be made possible by various locks along the Erie Canal. These locks were necessary for boats to adjust to the uneven land underneath the Canal, and they worked by raising or lowering of the boat through a fixed lock when passing through a stretch of water that was on different levels. Today there are a total of 57 locks along the Erie Canal. The completion of the Erie Canal prompted a westward expansion, and a massive economic boom. The Erie Canal not only influenced the economic growth of New York State, but also had a great impact on the canal's adjacent lands, with many of New York State cities located along the original trade routes of the Erie Canal. In the later part of the 19th Century the Erie Canal became progressively less relevant, due to the increase in the sophistication of highway systems and railroads. In 1903, the New York State began a process of further enlarging the Erie Canal, hoping that this would revitalize the trade along the Erie Canal. The reconstruction of the canal was completed in 1918, and although the project had expanded the canal to be 120-200 ft. in width, and 12-14 ft. in depth, this alone was not enough to save the canals reputation as a major economic center. Today the Erie Canal is used more for the recreational activities it offers than as a place of commerce. Today many of the paths for the hiking trails along the Erie Canal are remnants of the time when barges were pulled by mules on tow paths instead of engines.