Canal-Town, USA revisited - 1968

Canal-Town, USA revisited

In 1968 the Fort Hunter Canal Society published a booklet on the Erie Canal in Fort Hunter. Titled, “Fort Hunter— ‘Canal-Town USA’” - it was written by FHCS member David H. Veeder and printed by the Noteworthy Company of Amsterdam, NY. We are reproducing a segment of that booklet here in the newsletter* for your reading enjoyment. 

“On July 4, 1817, in a ceremony at Rome, the first furrow was plowed in the excavation of the canal. After twenty-five years of political struggle, the Erie Canal was finally begun.

   Immediately, major problems were encountered. As General Schuyler had discovered, trained engineers were non-existent an historical present for such an undertaking was lacking. The chief engineers, Benjamin Wright and James Geddes, were actually New York  lawyers with no previous experience in canal-building.  On the other hand, finding labor was easy. Unemployed Americans and immigrants flocked to take the well-paid jobs offered by the contractors. The original wage of 80 cents a day was soon raised to one dollar.

   Most of the engineering problems had to be solved on the spot. To pull trees down and yank out the roots at the same time, a device was developed that could be run by one man. A chain was tied high in the tree with the other end connected to a large wheel, which ran on a screw-type gear turned by one man. Turning the gear wound the chain and pulled the tree out of the ground, roots and all. To pull out stumps, a large three-wheeled axle was devised, the two outer wheels each measuring 16 feet in diameter and the inner one 14 feet in diameter, coiled with rope. First fastening the stump to the axle by a chain, the horses which were hitched to the rope pulled, revolved the wheel, and out came the stump. Ingenious as these machines were, steam-shovels and bull-dozers were far in the  future, and the major task of earth-moving was all done by hand with hand shovels, wheelbarrows and horse drawn scoops.

   At Fort Hunter, where the canal crossed the Schoharie Creek a typical problem was presented: how to cross one body of water with another one. Intersections of water are not easily made. A dam 650 feet long and 8 feet high was built across the creek a little downstream from where the canal would be located, creating a still water pool. Here the horses would be taken on board the boats, which would then be fastened to a rope on a capstan, and pulled across the creek.

   On the Fort Hunter side of the Schoharie was a guard lock made with stones taken from the old Queen Anne stone chapel which was torn down because it was in the way of the canal. Part of this lock still remains. The original 1820 ditch runes through Fort Hunter much as it did in 1825 when a triumphant DeWitt Clinton rode through it on the first boat to make the trip from Buffalo to Albany… At the eastern end of the Fort Hunter segment is the original Empire Lock #20, built in 1822. Standing here, one can picture clearly what it must have been like in the early days of the  canal, when pioneers and immigrants rode it on the first leg of the journey to the west. Many expeditions that ended with the Oregon Trail began on the Erie Canal. The Erie Canal packet boats were the fastest form of transportation know until the coming of the railroads.

   In October of 1825, the Erie Canal was completed. It ran three hundred and sixty-three miles from Buffalo to Albany, and was second only in length to the great canal of China. It was forty feet wide and four feet deep. Eighty-three locks were built and eighteen aqueducts to cross major bodies of water were constructed. “Clinton’s Big Ditch” became the engineering wonder of the world. …”

*Article originally appeared in the Summer 2022 Newsletter

 

Image: Donald Art Co., Inc., c1957

- accessed from: www.eriecanal.org

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