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Detail from “A geological and agricultural survey of the district adjoining the Erie canal in the state of New York,” printed by Packard & Benthuysen, Albany New York, 1824. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division.
Detail from "A geological and agricultural survey of the district adjoining the Erie canal . . .," printed by Packard & Benthuysen, Albany New York, 1824. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division.


This engraving is one of four inset images from an 1824 map showing a geological profile of the entire length of the Erie Canal.

Work on the Erie Canal began on July 4, 1817, at Rome, New York. The October 1818 issue of The American Monthly Magazine and Critical Review described the promise of the “grand canal”:

". . . states and perhaps nations will hereafter owe to it their most intimate and beneficial connexions. It is constructed not as a frail barrier between civilization and barbarism, but to promote union, prosperity, and happiness among the enterprising inhabitants of a new world."

An engineering marvel at the time of its completion in 1825, the Erie Canal was 363 miles long, 40 feet wide, and 4 feet deep. It boasted 18 aqueducts, 83 locks, and a 10-foot-wide towpath along its bank for the horses, mules, and oxen that pulled the canal boats.

The Erie Canal opened a high-volume trade route linking the Atlantic coast with the Great Lakes, spurred vigorous settlement and development in the entire Great Lakes region, and established New York City as the commercial and economic center in the United States. The Erie Canal also turned Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Rome, Utica, and Schenectady, New York, into boom towns. In 1833, canal boat passenger James Stuart noted Rochester as:

". . the most thriving of the villages on the Erie Canal . . . situated on a considerable river, the Genesee, near Lake Ontario, and possessing Immense water power. . . . The place only contained a[pproximately] 1000 inhabitants in 1818 and now about 13,000. There are cotton-works, power-looms, woollen factories, eleven flour-mills, and six or seven churches."

The Erie Canal made it possible to transport goods at a fraction of the previous expense and in less than half the previous overland time. Barge loads of farm produce and raw materials moved east as manufactured goods and supplies flowed west.

Between 1836 and 1862, to keep pace with growing demand and competition from railroads, the Erie Canal was widened to 70 feet and deepened to 7 feet. In 1918, much of the original Erie Canal route was replaced by the larger New York State Barge Canal, and many sections were abandoned completely.

Continued railroad expansion, the development of the highway system in the 1950s, and the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in 1959, caused a dramatic decline in commercial traffic on the canal. Since the 1990s, surviving sections of the canal system has been used primarily by recreational boaters.


This article was written by Jodi Norman, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.