As the Erie Canal marks its 200th anniversary on Sunday, columnist George Will suggests Americans take a moment to toast the "ditch" that transformed a nation. Dug with little more than muscle and ingenuity, the 363-mile canal was a marvel of its time, he writes in the Washington Post, vastly longer than any other US canal before it (by a staggering 336 miles), and finished two years ahead of schedule and under budget. The canal's impact was immediate and profound.
Towpath mules could pull 50 floating tons at a steady 4mph, compared to just 2 tons pulled by wagon. Soon the canal was moving twice the value of goods as the Mississippi. Cities like Rochester and Syracuse mushroomed along its route, bringing both opportunity and upheaval. The canal helped turn New York City into a global financial hub, with ship traffic in the harbor exploding from hundreds of boats to more than a thousand in little more than a decade.
By 1850, what was once a $60 wall clock now cost just $3 in America. Will cites historian Daniel Walker Howe's take: "Changes from the rustic to the commercial that had taken centuries to unfold in Western civilization were telescoped into a generation in western New York state." It also connected prairie farmers with eastern markets, accelerating America's westward expansion. The effects rippled far beyond US borders. As cheap American grain flooded Europe, hundreds of thousands of European farms went under. As Will quips, "Some ditch." (Read his full column here.)
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