Published: June 20, 2008 01:29 pm            

ERIE CANAL DISCOVERY: Getting canal fever

While New York State studied the need for expanding the Erie Canal in the mid-1800s, there were loud voices calling for action on proposals to build additional feeder canals that would tie into Clinton's Ditch. Communities and areas far from the regions served directly by the canal saw their future to be dependent on some kind of connection with the Erie Canal. With it, they were sure they could tap into the same prosperity that followed the path of the Erie Canal. Within a period of a few years, a whole system of side cuts or lateral canals, reaching into remote areas, was authorized.

Even before the 363 mile Erie Canal was completed, the state had decided it would build an additional 60-mile canal to connect the Hudson River to Lake Champlain. The Champlain Canal, like its “big sister” the Erie Canal, was an instant success. Almost as soon as the Erie Canal itself had been completed in 1825, the state began a system of feeder canals by starting construction of the 24 mile Oswego Canal, providing a link between the Erie Canal and Lake Ontario at Oswego. It was opened in 1828. Among other auxiliary canals authorized was the Cayuga and Seneca Canal, which joined the largest of the Finger Lakes and brought them within the Erie's system; it too was finished in 1828. In 1833, the Chemung Canal extended the system farther south to Elmira, near the Pennsylvania border. Oneida Lake was connected through a 5-mile canal in 1835, and two years later the Chenango Canal joined the Susquehanna River with the Erie Canal at Utica. The Genesee Canal was started in 1837, running from Rochester south to Olean and ultimately to the Allegheny River.

The huge success of the Grand Erie Canal in New York did not escape the attention of people in other states. Canal construction became a form of madness in the young nation, a madness called, in fact, canal fever. New York State had proven to the rest of the country that canals were the answer to the transportation problems that had kept our great new land from realizing its destiny. Pennsylvania, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Virginia, Connecticut, Ohio, Delaware and Maryland were among the states that became involved in the building of artificial waterways. The competition for Irish ditch-diggers was fierce.

Altogether, some 800 miles of canals were opened and put in use between 1820 and 1830 in New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. Another 1,300 miles were started and under construction during that decade. According to George Condon, author of the Erie Canal book, Stars in the Water, “the whole land was aflame with the fever of progress.”

Doug Farley is director of the Erie Canal Discovery Center. Contact him at (716) 434-7433. The Discovery Center is open for the season.

        

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