Tom Ragosta, Watervliet City Historian, will give an illustrated talk on the Erie Canal on Monday, April 6 at 7:30 pm at the Stephentown Historical Society’s Heritage Center, Garfield Road (County Route 26), Stephentown. The building is handicapped accessible.
[private]For directions, telephone (518) 733-0010.
The Erie Canal is famous in song and story. Proposed in 1808, begun in 1817, and completed in 1825, the canal links the waters of Lake Erie in the west to the Hudson River in the east.
The canal opened the country west of the Appalachian Mountains to settlers and offered a faster, cheap and safe way to carry produce to a market. Governor Dewitt Clinton broke ground for the project on July 4, 1817 and construction of “Clinton’s Big Ditch” took the next eight years. It was the engineering marvel of its day, with its 18 aqueducts to carry the canal over ravines and rivers, and 83 locks to lift boats the 568 feet of elevation from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. It was only four feet deep and 40 feet wide, and floated boats carrying 30 tons of freight. Horses and/or mules pulled the boats along a towpath built along the bank.
In order to keep pace with the growing demands of traffic, the Erie Canal was enlarged between 1836 and 1862, and then again between 1903 and 1918. The present-day canal can handle barges carrying up to 3,000 tons of cargo, although most of its traffic is recreational boating. [/private]