Westward by Canal

Extract

“Here and there in Ohio, Indiana and the Eastern States,” says Alvin F. Harlow in his book, Old Towpaths, “the pedestrian… may sometimes notice the faint indication of an embankment or a shallow depression, weed-grown but stretching away with such regularity of line as to rouse his belief that it may be an artificial work.… If he will inquire in the neighborhood he may find some white-bearded ancient who remembers that these poor ruins are all that is left of what was once a great internal improvement, the pride of the locality and the State — a canal.”

William Dean Howells writes that canals in 1837 were a greater achievement than railroads were in 1897. Before the railroad came, there was an elaborate system of them, built with characteristic American enthusiasm and enterprise, by men who were not professional engineers, many of whom had never seen a canal. The Erie gave New York her start toward becoming the American metropolis, and Pennsylvania had a system of state canals, supplemented by short railroads, which connected Philadelphia with Pittsburgh.