Rodney Myszaka, age 10, of White Plains, N.Y., for his question:
HOW MUCH DID IT COST TO BUILD THE ERIE CANAL?
The first major national canal constructed in the United States was the Erie Canal. The waterway was completed 164 years ago in 1825 and the cost of the entire project was $7,143,789.
Construction costs were high in those days, just as they are today. But the Erie Canal quickly paid for itself and then some. From the time it opened in 1825 until 1882, when the toll charges were eliminated, the state of New York had collected $121,461,891.
The Erie Canal crosses New York from Buffalo on Lake Erie to Troy and Albany on the Hudson River. It joins the entire Great Lakes system with the Atlantic Ocean.
The canal provided a route over which manufactured goods could move into the West and raw material could be transported into the East. The Erie Canal helped make New York City the financial center of the country.
The original canal was 363 miles long. It was 28 feet wide at the bottom, 42 feet wide at the top and four feet deep. It could carry boats that were 80 feet long and 15 feet wide, with a draft of three and a half feet.
A larger canal was soon needed and in 1835, the New York Legislature passed a law providing for improvements of the canal. By 1862, enlargement projects on the canal had been undertaken a number of times.
The development of railroads made the canal less important after the civil war. Business began to fall off. In 1903 the people of New York voted a bond of $101 million to make the canal part of a larger, modern waterway.
With the passing of the bond issue, the Erie Canal was connected to three shorter canals in New York to make up the 524 mile long New York State Barge Canal System. It opened for business in 1918.
The genius behind the Erie Canal was a businessman of vision named DeWitt Clinton. He went on to become governor of New York.
The famous newspaper editor Horace Greeley, commenting on how slow and inexpensive it was to travel on the waterway, said you could travel a mile and a half an hour for a cent and a half a mile.
Building of the Erie Canal was paid for entirely by the state of New York. No federal funds were used because Washington turned down the idea when Clinton presented it in 1812.
Clinton wrote a petition in 1815 that the New York Legislature should undertake the building of the canal. The idea won wide support and in 1816 the governor appointed a canal commission and made Clinton its head.
Clinton became governor in 1817 and shortly after, on July 4, 1817, ground for the canal was broken in Rome, N.Y. Construction took eight years.
The first section was completed in 1820. As the canal grew, towns along its course prospered.
Clinton was governor again when the canal was completed in 1825. The first boat to make the entire trip along its route was called the Seneca Chief. Governor Clinton was on board.