Why was the Erie Canal important? The Erie Canal was important because it connected the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. This cut down shipping time and costs, and it unlocked the American Midwest.
The Erie Canal is 584 km long. It runs from the Hudson River in New York State to Lake Erie. The Hudson River flows into the Atlantic Ocean, not far from New York City. Lake Erie connects to Lake Huron through the Detroit River, Lake St. Clair, St. Clair River route. Then Lake Huron connects to Lake Michigan through the Straits of Mackinac. So, with this canal, goods could travel by water from New York Harbor, up the Hudson River, along the Erie Canal, and into the Great Lakes system. From Lake Erie, they could continue toward Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. This did not mean ocean-going ships could sail all the way inland, but it created a continuous water-based trade route deep into the continent.
After the US won the War of Independence, the population started to grow. The US was still confined to the eastern side of the modern USA. In 1803, the US government purchased most of the central USA from the French government, which doubled the size of the country. In 1821, they received Oregon Country from the Spanish, which meant that the USA spanned the entire continent for the first time. However, apart from a few hardy settlers, the majority of these new areas were only inhabited by the native peoples. Americans were trapped in the east of the country by the Appalachian Mountains. They were passable, but not easily. They cut off trade and they made it very difficult to control the entire country. It wasn’t just people that were trapped by the mountains, grain and resources grown on the other side were also trapped. There were only a few places where the Appalachian Mountains were passable and donkeys or horses can only pull so much weight on land. Getting the grain across the mountains to the cities on the east side of the USA was prohibitively expensive and extremely difficult.
Because of this, the idea to connect the Hudson River to Lake Erie was suggested as far back as the 1780s. Any city that could connect themselves to the center of the USA with a waterway would be able to take advantage of all those resources and would become wealthy. It is not only because boats can sail along a waterway. The main advantage of a canal is that a mule can pull a barge. Due to less friction, a mule can pull a barge weighing 27,000 kg, whereas it could only carry 110 kg. The city of New York was interested and building a canal seemed like a simple idea, but the ground rises 180 meters between the Hudson and Lake Erie. Locks of the time could only lift a boat 3.7 meters, so the whole canal would need fifty locks, which was far beyond anything the young United States had attempted before.
Work finally started in 1817 and it was slow going. There was obviously a lot of earth to be moved, but the trees proved to be more of a problem. It was thick forest. A few inventions helped. Someone came up with a machine that could pull out tree stumps. Immigration into the USA increased the amount of available labor, which sped everything up. The whole canal was completed and finally opened on October 26, 1825.
The canal had a huge impact on the city of New York and for the USA as a whole. Migration into the center of the USA became much easier and cities out west started to grow. The cities at each end of the canal, New York in the east and Buffalo in the west grew drastically. It became far easier and cheaper to send resources from one end to the other. The port of New York became the main port for any ships that wanted to head to the Midwest. Trade also flowed from Canada, on the other side of the Lakes, and grain from the Midwest was easily traded to the UK.
A few years after the canal was built, the other lakes were connected as well, which increased the navigable distance. Other states started to build their own canals as well. However, by the late 19th century, trains were starting to overtake the canals, and railway lines were built through the Appalachian Mountains. They were faster and could haul more. The canal was used for a long time after this and was expanded to take larger ships, but it eventually became only for vacationers. Still, without it, the expansion of the USA might have been quite different. And this is what I learned today.
Source
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachia
https://www.history.com/articles/are-the-great-lakes-connected
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_the_United_States
By Joshua Karn – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24680018