Wedding Of The Waters: The Erie Canal

The 363-mile-long Erie Canal, which linked farmlands and merchants in remote areas in and around the Great Lakes region with lucrative markets of the Eastern Seaboard, was completed on Oct. 26, 1825 — two centuries ago Sunday.

Building the canal was an enormous undertaking. But the rewards were equally enormous. The canal is credited for turning New York City into an economic powerhouse for the very young United States.

The Making of An Early American Economic Engine

In 1805, President Thomas Jefferson suggested that surplus federal revenue might be used to upgrade the young nation’s road and canal systems to make it cheaper for farmers to get their goods to market.

Two years later, Jesse Hawley — a flour merchant from Western New York, who had gone broke trying to ship his product to cities along the East Coast — published a series of essays from debtor’s prison in which he advocated for a canal that would reach nearly 400 miles from Buffalo, New York, on the shore of Lake Erie to Albany, on the Hudson River. Which, of course, is upstream from the harbor of New York City.

New York City major DeWitt Clinton read these essays and thought it was a grand plan. He began pushing for such a canal and, in 1810, began working to gain financial backing from Congress. He tried again in 1815 and finally won approval in April 1816.

Ground was broken for the canal near Utica, New York, on July 4, 1817 — three days after Clinton was sworn in as the state’s governor.

The work was grueling. Engineers had to learn completely new skills to build across fields, forests and cliffs, to build aqueducts over other rivers and streams and to build locks to raise and lower boats between stretches of the canal. At one point, engineers learned how to make waterproof cement from American limestone. This meant they no longer had to ship it in from England.

In order to clear land along the canal route, Native American tribes — the Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and the Seneca — were rounded up and sent to reservations along other eastern states or in the Midwest.

Throughout most of the work, Clinton served as both governor and acting leader of the canal’s commission. Political strife led to his retiring from government in 1823 but his supporters managed to overcome opposition. Clinton was re-elected governor in 1824 and took office again in January 1825.

Construction on the canal was officially completed on Oct. 26, 1825. The state celebrated with a series of cannons lined up along the length of the canal that fired in a sequence that lasted more than 90 minutes from one end to the other.

Clinton and other dignitaries sailed the length of the canal from Buffalo to New York City. Upon his arrival on Nov. 4, 1825, Clinton poured a keg of water from Lake Erie into the harbor, celebrating “the Wedding of the Waters.”

Construction of the Erie Canal had cost $7.14 million and was mostly funded by selling stock in the canal, tolls and taxes on salt and on auctions.

Gov. DeWitt Clinton performs the Wedding of the Waters with from Lake Erie on Nov. 4, 1825. Source: New York Public Library

It cost passengers only a penny and a half to travel the length of the canal. The cost of moving a ton of freight from Albany to Buffalo cost $20 and took eight days. It cost $100 and took 20 days to do that by wagon.

Horses pull boats through the locks at Lockport in 1895. Sourced from the New York State Archives

Traffic on the new canal exploded. The canal brought in a half-million dollars in tolls its first year. Before long, the canal was bringing in profits of $3 million annually. The cities of Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse flourished.

And New York City quickly grew into the commercial capital it is today, eclipsing what had been larger port cities like Boston, Philadelphia and New Orleans. New York’s population would quadruple between 1820 and 1850.

By 1853, the Erie Canal carried 62% of all U.S. trade. Farmers in Ohio demanded canal links from their own communities to the Great Lakes so they, too, could ship cheaply to New York City. Canal projects spread across the country. Never mind the fact that canal traffic would soon be eclipsed by long-distance railroad shipping.

Cargo boats round a corner at Little Falls - a popular scenic stop - in or around 1890 or so. Photo from the Library of Congress.

The Erie Canal By The Numbers

363 - Length in miles of the original Erie Canal

83 - Number of locks in the Erie Canal in 1825

57 - Number of locks in the Erie Canal today

4 - Depth in feet of the original canal. It's now 12 to 23 feet deep

571 - Elevation change in feet from Buffalo to Albany

18 - Aqueducts to bypass rivers and streams

200 - Cities, towns and villages along the canal

5 - Days it took to travel the canal from Albany to Buffalo

14 - Days it took to travel from Albany to Buffalo via stagecoach

10 - Years it took for the canal to return its 7.1 million investment