Erie Canal

“The building of the Erie Canal was the engineering marvel that unleashed the growth of the young nation that was the United States.
Spearheaded by the vision of Gov. Dewitt Clinton, New York State built the waterway that opened the West to settlement and made New York City the center of finance and commerce.
Opened in 1825, the canal proved so commercially viable that construction of an enlarged Erie Canal began just 11 years later.
The success of the canal spawned the growth of cities, towns, businesses, and industries along its route in upstate New York.”

Yrs Trly has purchased a book on the Erie Canal by Martin Morganstein and Joan C. Cregg of the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse, NY.
I bought it at the mighty Wegmans supermarket in nearby Canandaigua, purchase of which apparently benefited the Ontario County Historical Society. (We live in Ontario County.)
It’s essentially a picture-book, but I bought it mainly because it reprises two points I’ve trumpeted for years, mainly that the Erie Canal -a) opened up commerce west of the Appalachians, so as that as such it was phenomenally successful, and -b) it made New York City this nation’s prime east-coast port and seat of commerce.

“Dating back to the mid-1700s, well before the birth of the United States, much discussion had taken place regarding the building of a canal through the Mohawk gap in the Appalachians across New York.
The great barrier of the Appalachians had confined the growth of the colonies, and then the new American nation, to the eastern seaboard. Traveling to the interior, over poor roads and trails, was an arduous time-consuming task.
A survey of a canal route that would join the Hudson River with Lake Erie was ordered by the New York State legislature in 1808 and, with the support of Gov. Dewitt Clinton, construction of the Erie Canal began in Rome on July 4, 1817. The 363-mile-long canal, with its 83 locks, 18 aqueducts, and nearly 300 bridges, cost the state of New York $7,143,789.66 and was officially opened on October 26, 1825.
From the very beginning, the Erie Canal was an unbridled success. Between 1817 and 1836, nine lateral canals were built, connecting northern and southern parts of the state to the Erie Canal and the Mohawk Valley.
Enlargement of the original canal, begun in 1835, was completed in 1862 at a cost of over four times that of the original project.
The expansion of U.S. boundaries westward, and political and economic events in Europe that contributed to the American immigration explosion, played a vital role in the Erie Canal’s success.
As raw materials and agricultural products from new settlements moved eastward, finished goods and newcomers traveled westward on the canal.
New York City became the young nation’s major port as the flow of traffic traveled up and down the Hudson River and across the state on the canal.
By 1835, cross-state travel time was reduced from four to six weeks to six days, and freight costs fell from $95 to $125 per ton to $4 to $6 per ton.
Cities and towns sprang up to service this commerce and, as canal traffic prospered, so did these communities.
Populations of the principal cities along the route doubled and tripled between 1830 and 1850, and businesses and industries grew to meet their needs.
The importance of the Erie Canal faded with the coming of the railroads, but not before the canal left its indelible mark on the history and heritage of New York State and the United States.
The Erie Canal was there at the inception of the ever-escalating race to get from one place to another efficiently and economically, the east-west precursor of today’s New York State Thruway.”

And guess what, Tea Partiers, and those that loudly criticize every government effort as vastly inferior to private-enterprise......
It was a government effort (Gasp!), researched and financed and built by the state of New York.
Not private-enterprise (huzza-huzza).
How can this even be possible, that government could do a project that was phenomenally successful?
We all know that government is stupid —We listen to Rush Limbaugh.
It’s not guided by “the invisible hand.”
As if corporate enterprise was not rife with politics.
This makes me wonder about government’s efforts to encourage Fast-Rail.
“Fast-Rail,” so to speak, worked in south Jersey.
But it had a viable market.
Commuters from south Jersey to Philadelphia had a river barrier.
Fast-rail in south Jersey, PATCO (Port-Authority Transit Corporation), surmounts that barrier.
And it can save 15 minutes to a half-hour compared to an auto commute.
PATCO was a government effort by the port-authority.
The alarm could be set later, and there’s no parking hassle in Philadelphia.
But where’s the barrier for New York Fast-Rail?
For the Erie Canal it was the Appalachians.
For Fast-Rail to succeed in New York state, auto-travel via the NY State Thruway has to become untenable — like gas at $20 a gallon.
And the way politicians are having it stop at every podunk town it won’t be Fast-Rail.

• “Wegmans” is a large supermarket-chain based in Rochester we often buy groceries at. They have a store in Canandaigua. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city to the east nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” It’s about 14 miles away.) We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.)
• “PATCO” took advantage of existing commutation routes, mainly an existing rapid-transit line over Ben Franklin Bridge between Camden, NJ, and Philadelphia. There was also existing railroad where PATCO could use the existing right-of-way. The rapid-transit to Philadelphia was thereby extended out into south Jersey suburbs. This avoided another highway river crossing.
• The “NY State Thruway“ is Interstate 87, New York City up to Albany, and Interstate 90, Albany west. It’s still a toll-road, built and financed by New York state. It’s the main east-west highway across the state, and more-or-less parallels the Erie Canal.
• The Erie Canal had to surmount one major barrier in its march west, the Niagara Escarpment. The Niagara Escarpment is the table of rock Buffalo sits on, and what Niagara Falls goes over. The Erie Canal climbed the Escarpment at Lockport, five locks in immediate series at first. The railroad and the Thruway also had to climb the Escarpment. Bergen Hill (up the Escarpment) was the only major grade on the railroad, outside of Albany Hill (climbing up from the Hudson river valley). —The Thruway climbs it just east of Batavia, NY (“buh-TAVE-eee-uh;” as in “ate”).