Becky O'Brien, age 14, of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., for her question:
WHEN WAS THE ERIE CANAL BUILT?
The Erie Canal, the first important national waterway constructed in the United States, was built more than 160 years ago. It was completed in 1825 and was paid for entirely by the state of New York. The canal helped New York City develop into the financial center of the country.
The Erie Canal took its name from Lake Erie, which in turn received its name from the Indians. Erie is a member of an Iroquoian tribe of American Indians formerly living along the southern and eastern shores of Lake Erie.
The Erie Canal, when it opened, stretched 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo, connecting the Hudson River with Lake Erie. It had 84 locks, was about 40 feet wide at the surface and about four feet deep. Goods could be shipped for $14 a ton instead of the $120 prior overland cost. It took eight years to dig the canal.
In 1862, 37 years after it opened for service, the New York legislature passed a law providing for improvement of the canal since a larger one was needed. By 1882 it had been enlarged several times.
When the canal was built, construction costs amounted to a bit over $7 million. Between 1825 and 1882, when toll charges were abolished, the state had collected more than $121 million from people using the Erie Canal.
In 1903 about $100 million was spent to turn the canal into a modern waterway. The Erie Canal was combined with three shorter canals to form the New York State Barge Canal System. This system, which is 524 miles long, opened in 1918.
The man who planned the Erie Canal and carried the plans through was a wealthy New York businessman named DeWitt Clinton. For a time, when it seemed the project might never be completed, it was called "Clinton's Folly." But Clinton went on to become governor of the state and the canal became a tremendous success.
Early travel on the Erie Canal was very slow. The famous journalist Horace Greeley once wrote that you could travel a mile and a half in an hour and a half for a cent and a half a mile.
For more than a hundred years before the Erie Canal was built, people had been thinking about and planning a canal that would someday join the Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes. It was well known that such a waterway would provide a route over which manufactured goods could move into the West and raw materials could flow back to the East.
All agreed that the entire nation would benefit from such a great canal. But it took much planning and a lot of money to finally launch the building project.
Phones and telegraphs were not known when the Erie Canal was completed and it took 81 minutes for the news of the opening of the waterway to travel from Buffalo to Sandy Hook, N.J., near Lower New York Bay. This was done by means of cannon placed along the way. The firing of each gun was the signal for the next to fire.