Canal+Age+-+Erie+Canal

__**​​The Canal Age **__

__ General Overview __ External Links: The Canal Age __ Steamboats __
 * 1790 - 1820s: Americans relied mostly on roads for transportation.
 * For industrialization purposes, America needed faster, more expensive ways to travel over longer distances
 * 1820’s and 1830’s: America begins looking for new ways of transportation
 * Flatbarges were becoming obsolete because they could not go upstream.
 * America needed a new system in order to create a new market
 * They needed more advanced technology and more investments in order to progress
 * Canals benefitted both the East and the Midwest.

External Links: History of Steamboats __ Economic Advantages __ __ The Erie Canal __ External Link: [|The Erie Canal]
 * As steamboats improved in size and number, rivers became more important.
 * Carried northwestern crops (corn and wheat) and southwestern crops (cotton and tobacco) to New Orleans.
 * Took a fraction of the time that barges took.
 * Beginning in New Orleans, the crops would travel to the east
 * As more and more passengers traveled, companies built nicer vessels to compete for trade.
 * However, it was less to transpost their goods by land than by sea.
 * Northeastern merchants could sell larger quantities of their manufactured goods if they could transport their merchandise more directly.
 * New highways across mountains provided partial solutions to the problem.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">But, the cost of taking goods on land was too high for anything accept compact goods.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Thoughts began to turn to other canals.
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Southern Economic Issues
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">In the 1820's, booming interest in expanding water routes to the West was generated.
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Private enterprise could not afford canal building, so the job of digging them fell on the states.
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Congress approved a bill to provide funding for the canal, however President Monroe found this bill to be unconstitutional and vetoed it
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">New York legislature approved state funding in 1816, with tolls to payback the state treasury upon completion
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">New York was first to begin, and started with diggin between the Hudson River and Lake Erie.
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Although there were many ridges and forests in the way, the digging of this canal began on July 4, 1817
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The Erie Canal cost $7 million dollars to build but reduced shipping costs
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Traffic was so heavy that within 7 years the tolls had repaid the cost of the construction
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The Erie Canal was the largest construction project that the United States had ever undertaken up to that point
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The Erie Canal connects Lake Erie in the west to the Hudson River in the east
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The first proposal of the Canal came in 1768
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">On July 4, 1817, Governor Dewitt Clinton broke ground to begin the construction of the canal in Rome, New York
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Hundreds of cuts and fills were required to enable the canal to pass through hills and over valleys
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Completed on October 26, 1825, the Erie Canal was considered a modern marvel
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Gave New York direct access to Chicago and other western markets
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Forced competition between New Orleans and New York as a destination for agricultural goods (wheat) and as a source for manufactured goods to be sold
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">It consisted of 18 aqueducts (to carry it across streams), 88 locks of heavy masonry with great wooden gates (permit ascents and descents), and was 363 miles long (from Hudson River to Lake Erie)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">It was 4 feet deep and 40 feet wide with towpaths along the banks
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">It could accomodate boats carrying up to 30 tons
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">However, the Erie Canal was too small; therefore, from 1836 to 1862, it was enlarged

__ Expansion of Canals __ External Links: Timeline of Canals 1820-1829
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Inspiration of Erie Canal began expansion
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Settlement in the Northwest increased due to easier migration methods
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">States of Ohio and Indiana provided water connections between Lake Erie and the Ohio River

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Successes and Failures __
 * Canals connected all the way to New York.
 * Boston couldn not connect to the West with canals because of the Berkshire Mountians.
 * <span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; msobidifontfamily: Symbol; msofareastfontfamily: Symbol; msolist: Ignore;"> Philadelphia and Baltimore could not build canals because of the Allegheny Mountains
 * Maryland began constructing a canal, but was only able to connect Washington D.C. to Cumberland.
 * Richmond and Charleston also began to construct canals, but were unsuccessful as well.
 * Overall, canals were not a source of transportation to the West.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">This led to new ideas which began the era of the railroad.