On October 26, 1825, Governor DeWitt Clinton stood on a boat at Buffalo harbor and poured two kegs of Lake Erie water into a barrel. Ten days later, after traveling 363 miles through 83 locks, he poured that water into New York Harbor - the 'Wedding of the Waters' that symbolically married the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. The Erie Canal had taken eight years to build, cost $7 million, and been called 'Clinton's Ditch' by skeptics who thought it impossible. It wasn't impossible. It was transformative. Within a decade, New York City had become America's commercial capital, western farmers could ship grain to eastern markets, and immigrants could travel inland without breaking their backs. The canal made modern America.
Before the Erie Canal, the Appalachian Mountains blocked westward expansion. Goods could travel down the Mississippi to New Orleans, but nothing connected the Great Lakes to the Atlantic. Portages and primitive roads moved freight at enormous cost - $100 per ton to move cargo from Buffalo to New York City. A canal would cut that cost by 95%, but no canal on this scale had ever been built in America. DeWitt Clinton, mayor of New York and later governor, championed the project against fierce opposition. 'Clinton's Ditch,' opponents called it - a folly that would bankrupt the state. Clinton bet his career on it.
America had no canal engineers in 1817, so the Erie Canal was built by learning on the job. Surveyors became engineers; farmers became excavators; the workforce was largely Irish immigrants who dug the 40-foot-wide, 4-foot-deep channel with shovels and wheelbarrows. They built 83 locks to lift boats 565 feet from the Hudson to Lake Erie. They carved through rock at Lockport. They built the Genesee Aqueduct, carrying the canal over a river on stone arches. The work was brutal - malaria killed hundreds in the swampy western sections. Eight years after groundbreaking, the canal opened.
The Erie Canal paid for itself in nine years. Shipping costs dropped 90%; travel time fell from weeks to days. Western farmers could now sell grain in eastern markets at competitive prices. Immigrants could reach Ohio and Michigan without months of overland travel. Towns along the canal - Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo - exploded with growth. New York City, which controlled the canal's eastern terminus, became America's busiest port and financial center. The canal created the commercial geography of the eastern United States, concentrating power and population in patterns that persist today.
Railroads eventually outcompeted the canal, but by then the damage was done - to New Orleans, to Philadelphia, to any city that thought it could rival New York. The canal was expanded multiple times, becoming the modern New York State Barge Canal system, which still operates though mainly for recreation. The original canal bed remains visible in many places - overgrown depressions running through backyards and parking lots, abandoned locks slowly crumbling. The wedding of the waters shaped a continent; the marriage lasted.
The Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor runs 524 miles across New York State. The Empire State Trail follows much of the original route, open for biking and hiking. Historic sites include Lock 3 at Lockport (the famous 'Flight of Five'), the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse (housed in an original weighlock building), and Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site. The modern Barge Canal is open to boats; tours and rentals are available in many towns. Buffalo marks the western terminus; the Finger Lakes region offers wine country alongside canal history. Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany all have significant canal heritage sites. The full trail can be biked in a week; day trips access the most significant sections.
Located at 42.86°N, 77.54°W near Rochester, the midpoint of the Erie Canal route. From altitude, the canal's path is visible as a linear feature crossing the landscape - sometimes a waterway, sometimes an abandoned depression, sometimes paved over by development. The Finger Lakes appear to the south; Lake Ontario lies to the north. The canal follows the Mohawk River valley in the east and the Lake Ontario plain in the west. Modern I-90 roughly parallels the route. The cities the canal created - Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo - are visible as urban clusters along the line. This was the route that made America possible, carved by hand across 363 miles.