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HISTORY The extraordinary success of the Bridgewater Canal in Britain, completed in 1761 to connect a coal mine to Manchester , led to a frenzy of canal building in England late in the 18th century. The idea of a canal or artificially improved waterway to tie the east coast to the new western settlements was in the air— Cadwallader Colden first proposed using the Mohawk River valley in 1724. George Washington led a serious effort to turn the Potomac River into a navigable link to the west, sinking substantial energy and capital into the Patowmack Company from 1784 until his death fifteen years later. Christopher Colles , who was familiar with the Bridgewater Canal, surveyed the Mohawk River valley and made a presentation to the New York state legislature in 1784 proposing a canal from Albany to Lake Ontario ; the proposal drew considerable attention and some action, but the effort would ultimately come to nothing. Gouverneur Morris and Elkanah Watson were other early proponents of a canal along the Mohawk, whose efforts lead to the creation of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company, which took the first actual steps to improve navigation on the Mohawk; the company was to prove that private financing was inadequate for a task of such scope. The canal proponent whose efforts would lead directly to the canal was the entrepreneurial Jesse Hawley , who imagined being able to grow huge quantities of grain in the upstate New York plains (then largely unsettled) for sale on the Eastern Seaboard . However he went Bankrupt trying to ship it to the coast, and while sitting in the Canandaigua debtors' prison he started pressing for the construction of a canal running along the Mohawk River valley. He had strong support from Joseph Ellicott , the agent for the Holland Land Company in Batavia . Ellicott realized that a canal would add immense value to the land he was selling in the western part of the state. Ellicott later became the first canal commissioner. The Mohawk River, a tributary to the Hudson, runs in a Glacial Meltwater channel across the northern reaches of the Appalachians, separating them in New York State into the Catskills and Adirondacks . The Mohawk Valley was the only cut across the Appalachians north of Alabama , and pointed almost directly from the already widely used Hudson River to the east, to either Lake Ontario or Lake Erie on the west. From there much of the interior and many settlements would be accessible on the lakes. The problem with this was that the land rises about 600 feet (183 m) from the Hudson River at Albany, New York to Lake Erie . Locks at the time could handle a change of up to 12 feet (3.5 m), so at least 50 locks would be required along the 360 mile canal. Any such canal would cost a fortune even today, but in 1800 such an undertaking was barely imaginable. President Jefferson thought the proposal was ridiculous and rejected it. Nevertheless Hawley managed to interest the governor, DeWitt Clinton , and after surveying the plan went ahead. The canal was to consist of a forty foot (12 m) wide, four foot (1.2 m) deep cut, with the removed soil being piled on the downhill side to form a walkway on that side. Barges, up to 3.5 feet (1.07 m) in draft, would be pulled by Mule s on the walkway. When barges crossed there was a quick unhitching and re-hitching of the mule teams while the barges continued due to momentum. The sides of the cut would be lined with stone, while the bottom would be covered with Clay . The stone work required hundreds of German Mason s to be brought in, who would later go on to build many of New York's famous buildings when the canal was completed. Construction began July 4 , 1817 , at Rome, New York . The first 15 mile (24 km) section between Rome and Utica opened two years later. At this rate the canal would not have been finished for another 30 years or so. The main problems were cutting the trees through miles of virgin forest, and moving the dirt, which was proving to be much slower than expected. Solutions were discovered, trees were pulled down with a rope thrown over the top of the tree and then winched down, and the stumps pulled out with a huge tripod-mounted winch. Mule-pulled carts were filled from much larger wheelbarrows to clear the dirt. A three-man team with mules could now build a mile long stretch in a year, meaning that the problem now was staffing. The men who planned and oversaw construction were novices, both as surveyors and as engineers— there ''were'' no civil engineers in the United States at the time. James Geddes and Benjamin Wright who laid out the route were judges, who had gained experience in surveying in settling boundary disputes; Geddes had only used a surveying instrument for a few hours. Canvass White was a 27-year-old amateur engineer, who talked Clinton into letting him go to Britain at his own expense to study the canal system there. Nathan Roberts was a math teacher and land speculator. Yet these men "carried the Erie Canal up the Niagara escarpment at Lockport, maneuvered it onto a towering embankment to cross over Irondequoit creek, spanned the Genesee River for it on an awesome aqueduct, and carved a route for it out of the solid rock between Little Falls and Schenectady—and all of those venturesome designs worked precisely as planned." (Bernstein, p. 381) Construction continued at an increased rate as new workers arrived, but halted completely when the canal reached the Montezuma Swamp in 1819 at the outlet of Cayuga Lake west of Syracuse, New York , when over 1000 workers died of swamp fevers. Work continued on the "downhill" side towards the Hudson, and when the swamp froze over in the winter, the crews all worked to complete the section right across the swamps. The middle section from Utica to Salina was completed in 1820 , and traffic on that section started up directly. The eastern section of the canal, 250 miles (402 km) from Rochester to Albany , was opened on September 10 , 1823 , to great fanfare; the 64-mile (103 km) north-south section from Watervliet to Lake Champlain was declared open on the same date. After Montezuma, the next obstacle was crossing the Niagara Escarpment , an 80-foot (24 m) wall of hard dolomitic Limestone , in order to rise to the level of Lake Erie. The route followed the channel of a creek that had cut a ravine steeply down the escarpment, with five locks in a series, thus giving rise to the community of Lockport, New York . The final leg of the canal had to be cut as much as 30 feet (9 m) through another limestone layer, the Onondaga ridge. Much of that section was blasted with Black Powder . The inexperience of the crews often led to accidents, and sometimes rocks falling on nearby homes. |
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