Settlers’ wagons jolted down roads that had once been Indian trails. When farmers and fur trappers got to the lonely frontier, they found that it cost too much and took too long to ship apples, flour, wood, and pelts to the eastern markets. Eastern merchants had no easy way to sell things such as axes and plows to those in the West. “At the time, it took nearly a month or more to get a barrel of flour from the shores of Lake Erie along the Mohawk Trail to the Hudson River.”(Harness, 3)

To speed up the work the contractors began using horse-drawn scrapers and ploughs instead of the traditional wheelbarrow, pick, and shovel. “This was a new idea and perhaps marked the beginning of American Leadership in efficiency with machines.”(Buehr, 35)

It was not until 1810, however, that a practical canal route was surveyed. Seven more years went by before the first shovelful of earth was dug on the fourth of July, 1817. The canal was to become the famous Erie Canal.

A water route, connecting the coast with the now Midwestern settlements was essential. As early as 1724, Cadwallader Glolden, surveyor of the Province of New York, had realized that such a route could be dug between the Hudson River at Albany and Lake Erie at Buffalo. By building a canal between these two points, it would be possible to ship goods by boat from New York City, up the Hudson River to the entrance of the canal at Albany, through the canal to Lake Erie and into the Great Lakes. It would mean that all the vast territory around the Great lakes would be opened to trade with the East.

Still, progress was slow. Steam shovels and cement had not yet been invented, so the walls had to be laid up stone by stone. Many locks had to be built, dams were needed to hold the water that kept the canal filled and the locks operating, and spillways and control gates were installed to prevent washouts and floods

Some topics in this essay:
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