The Erie Canal

The Erie Canal — page 1 — INTRODUCTION The American frontier was an escape and a place of hope for those willing and able to take their futures into their own hands Celebrated then and ever since in poetry short stories novels drama films music and paintings the epic westward movement movement in the United States has never failed to excite the imaginations of people everywhere In the United States the frontier moved in stages beginning with the eastern settlements the original thirteen colonies After the American Revolution the pioneers gradually crossed the Appalachian Mountains and went into the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys Some settlers arrived with eyes open and were happy with what they found Many did not expect the real frontier which was a hard place to live in Most of the normal expectations of life were missing One made do with what was available and normally that was very little Grinding poverty was the living standard standard at least until the frontier began to give way to civilization 4

The Erie Canal — page 2 — INTRODUCTION As the country expanded westward settlers in western western New York Pennsylvania and Ohio were faced with the problem of transporting goods The places to sell their farm products were the large eastern cities such as New York City In turn the settlers needed the supplies supplies and manufactured goods that were sold in these cities Wagon freight was too expensive it cost a hundred hundred dollars to send one ton of freight from Buffalo to New York City and the trip took twenty days The new flat bottomed river steamships offered cheap transportation transportation but there were no through water routes between the large population centers of the East and the farmlands farmlands of the developing West Canals built to link natural waterways were the solution solution The Erie Canal was the first canal in the United States to connect the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean Lake Ontario Oswego Oswego Canal Oneida Lake Rome Erie Sacandaga Reservoir Niagara Falls Lockport Rochester Cayuga Seneca m Canals Syracuse Utica Little Falls Buffalo Lakes Canal Canandaigua Lake Lake Canal Champlain Cohoes Hudson R Troy Albany Erie Cayuga Keuka Lake NEW YORK Seneca Lake 0 25 40 25 50 m 50 min 80 km Ina 2008 Encyclopædia Britannica Inc 0 Map of the Erie Canal

The Erie Canal — page 3 — THE ERIE CANAL The 363-mile 584-kilometer canal was constructed from 1817 to 1825 along the Mohawk River between the Hudson River and Lake Erie It connected Lake Erie at the city of Buffalo in the western part of the state with Albany the state capital located in the east At Albany the canal met with the Hudson River which runs south to New York City and empties into New York Bay at the southern tip of Manhattan Island The success of the Erie Canal propelled New York City into becoming a major commercial center and encouraged canal construction throughout the United States With ready access to markets settlers moved into upstate New York and western territories The importance of the canal to the early expansion of the United States cannot be overstated It opened the Great Lakes region to industry and farming and it provided provided a market for manufactured goods from the East By creating the nation’s first east-west water-trade link the canal encouraged westward expansion 6

The Erie Canal — page 4 — CHAPTER ONE WESTWARD HO In the middle of the 1700s both Britain and France controlled land in North America Britain controlled the thirteen colonies that later became the United States Under French rule was the area called New France It included large parts of what is now eastern Canada and also covered much of the Great Lakes region and areas west of the Appalachian Mountains Both countries wanted the upper Ohio River valley in what is now northeastern Ohio and western western Pennsylvania The French built a chain of forts from the St Lawrence River to the Mississippi and were trading with the Native Americans in the area However this land was claimed by Virginia under its sea-to-sea grant from England People from the British colonies were starting settlements in what they called the western frontier The conflict over the Ohio River valley led to an epic struggle between the two countries the French 77

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