Imagine you’re digging a moat 363 miles long. Using only shovels, picks, and wheelbarrows. Throw in some mules and oxen, and a few horses to help you out. And you might as well take some black powder, too, for when you hit rock ledges.

*Then imagine that your moat is actually a canal, so you’ve also got to create locks along the way.

*And while you’re at it, imagine that many of your workers are illiterate, and there’s not a single trained engineer on the job.

*What you’re imagining is the Erie Canal.

*Despite all that angst about taxes on tea, one of the reasons Americans rebelled in 1776 is because the British wouldn’t let them move west of the Appalachians to kill and rob the Indians. This was no problem once we got independence, but the mountain range was still a major obstacle.

*The Appalachians look low, even inconsequential, to us. But that’s because we aren’t trying to convince an ox to scale the slopes while hauling our furniture.

*Rather than using the overland route, people in Pittsburgh found it cheaper to ship their goods to Philadelphia by sending them down the Ohio, down the Missisippi to New Orleans, then out to sea and way south around Florida, then back up the coast to Delaware Bay and the City of Brotherly Love.

*Many people had seen the value of an Albany to Buffalo canal. New York Governor DeWitt Clinton hammered proposals through the legislature by which the state would fund the biggest construction project going on anywhere in the world. It’s staggering that they finished the job in only eight years (1817-1825).

*Its success sparked a nationwide canal-building craze, as communities hoped to cash in. But they overlooked a couple of key truths.

*First, Lake Erie and the Hudson River fairly screamed out to be linked. Just having a canal was meaningless. It had to join two points that NEEDED to be connected.

*Second, the Erie route might have been created for the purpose of one day putting a canal through. NYSDOT calls it “the Natural Corridor.” Besides the Canal, that stretch also accomodates (or accomodated) Indian trails; Routes 5 and 20; the New York State Thruway; Amtrack; the New York Central Railroad; and the New York State Barge Canal.

*While the Erie Canal was a smashing success, it stranded the Southern Tier, whose river system… plied by arks, rafts, and flatboats drifting downstream… had formerly been the great transportation route of western New York. We can still see that Bath was laid out to be a great metropolis, with green grassy squares and broad straght boulevards. But growth stopped, and land prices collapsed, when the Erie Canal opened.

*By 1833 we had the Crooked Lake Canal and the Chemung Canal, both of which helped a great deal, meantime bringing propseority to Watkins and Hammondsport. But the Southern Tier economy didn’t really recover until the Erie Railroad opened in 1851.

*At 4 PM on Friday, January 4, Steuben County Historical Society will kick off its Winter Lecure Series with a free public presentation on the Erie Canal, held in the Bath Fire Hall. Allegany County Historian Craig Braack will be the speaker, and you are more than welcome!