SOURCE: [The Erie Canal Organization, 1900]
Complications With Construction
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"Digging a ditch four feet deep and forty feet wide with hand labor through hundreds of miles of this primeval forest was the greatest challenge the builders of the Erie Canal would have to confront. The only sources of power were the traditional ones-human muscle plus horses or oxen."
-Peter L. Bernstein,Wedding of the Waters, The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation
The Erie Canal became the largest canal in history.
“To build a town hall or a church in a community was often daunting to a local citizenry in the 1820s. With the Erie Canal, State officials were proposing to build the equivalent along nearly four hundred miles of often uncharted wilderness. Just reaching some of the places to look and see, much less design and build, was challenging. Getting everyone on the same page at the same time must have seemed almost impossible.” |
American Heritage | The Erie Canal | 24 seconds (1957)
“The first builders of the Erie Canal faced these enormous engineering challenges at a time when there were almost no professional engineers in the United States.”
-The Erie Canal Organization
New York State hired private contractors to each build one mile of the canal and paid laborers to work on each area due to a diminished public work force.
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"The design and building of the Erie Canal took an incredible number of moving parts, and an inexhaustible labor force of man, animal and machinery." Workers faced dangerous conditions but managed to clear hundreds of miles of land for the canal, utilizing gunpowder to blow through solid rock. The canal faced many problems, including the freezing of the banks and boat traffic.
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The canal's success despite these difficulties symbolized the nation's growing strength.