Erie Canal - Commercial Artery, National Symbol (2024)

FAQs

What did the Erie Canal contribute to ______? ›

The Erie Canal helped to create an American identity, tying newly formed states into the fabric of the Union.

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.

The Erie Canal is a 363-mile waterway that connects the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River in upstate New York. The channel, which traverses New York state from Albany to Buffalo on Lake Erie, was considered an engineering marvel when it first opened in 1825.

The waterway could no longer compete against railroads or the new St. Lawrence Seaway, and traffic on the canal dwindled. Today the New York State Canalway Trail uses more than 320 km (200 miles) of the Barge Canal, including segments of the original Erie Canal, for multipurpose recreation.

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.

The Erie Canal opened the Midwest to settlement.

By providing a direct water route to the Midwest, the canal triggered large-scale emigration to the sparsely populated frontiers of western New York, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois.

If the Erie Canal had not been constructed, most of the commerce of the Midwest would have followed the Mississippi to and from New Orleans, and social, economic, and political sympathies might have taken a different form.

So the Canal Commissioners had no choice but to hire an amateur crew of self-taught local engineers that included a few inexperienced surveyors and at least one local math teacher. The two chief engineers were Benjamin Wright and James Geddes, lawyers by trade who learned how to survey by prosecuting land disputes.

Nearly 200 years old and still going strong. New York's canal system has been in continuous operation since 1825, longer than any other constructed transportation system on the North American continent.

Explanation: The Erie Canal connects the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean. The Hudson River, after meeting the east end of the canal, flows to the Atlantic Ocean by way of New York City.

Can you still travel the entire Erie Canal? ›

We limit our vessels to the western half of the canal. You can travel as far west as Buffalo and the mouth of Lake Erie, to the East you can travel through the Cayuga-Seneca Canal to Cayuga Lake, or do Baldwinsville area in Syracuse past Syracuse.

After President Thomas Jefferson declined to support use of federal funds for a canal in New York and his successor James Madison vetoed a bill that would have provided federal money for canal and road projects, Clinton worked tirelessly to garner support for the canal from a deeply divided New York State legislature.

They liked their peaceful lives and were afraid that the Canal would bring thieves and corruption to their small towns and villages. They worried that strangers passing through on canal boats might also bring diseases from the eastern cities. New Yorkers had mixed feelings about the Erie Canal.

The Erie Canal is a man made waterway linking the Hudson River to the Great Lakes. It opened up America to westward expansion, making the transport of goods and people quicker, cheaper, and more efficient and thus contributing to the growth of industrialization.

The Erie Canal reduced the travel time from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes by one half and provided travelers a welcome alternative to the rutted, muddy road of the stage coach. Passengers traveled on packet boats pulled by a team of horses or mules at a leisurely pace equivalent to that of a fast walk.

When the canal was opened in 1825, shipping traffic on the Hudson River ballooned as a result. The canal connected Lake Erie with the Hudson River, enabling cargo to travel efficiently between Ohio and New York City.

The movement of goods on the Erie Canal and to and from Albany boosted an already prominent New York City to the status of chief business and financial center of the nation. When the canal opened in 1825, the additional grain and farm produce traveling through the city increased gross business by $6 million.