Erie Canal, the ditch that made Chicago great, marks its 200th birthday

 

     The Erie Canal is one of those historical topics that traditionally make eyes roll up. It's so pre-industrial, and mule-centric. But as a student of the origins of Chicago, I knew that there is a fascinating tale there, one not only key to the development of the city, but also important today in this time of rapid technological change. I was so certain that last November, when we drove to Cooperstown for Thanksgiving, I detoured 45 minutes to Lockport, New York, to eyeball the thing, and take the above photograph. I'm glad that the paper recognized that I'd found something worthwhile, and splashed the story across the front page, and hope you agree.

     What was the most significant event in the history of Chicago?
     The Great Chicago Fire? Wrong. The 1893 World's Fair? Wrong. The Cubs winning the World Series in 2016? Tempting ... but no.
     Those don't count. Because Chicago was already a dynamic city when they occurred. What happened to create a major metropolis here in the first place?
     Time's up! The most important thing to ever happen in the history of Chicago — for starters, it's the reason Chicago is not a city in Wisconsin — isn't well known here because it didn't happen here, but 500 miles east, exactly 200 years ago Sunday: the opening of the Erie Canal, a 363-mile waterway, 40 feet across and four feet deep, from Albany, on the Hudson River, west to Buffalo on the northeast tip of Lake Erie.  

     The opening was announced by a cannon firing in Buffalo at 9 a.m. Oct. 26, 1825, with the news echoed across the state, all the way to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, by guns placed within earshot of each other.
     As that cannonade reverberated, kicking off eight days of celebration, Chicago was a swampy nowhere, a log stockade fort and, maybe, 100 residents. St. Louis, "the Rome of the West," had 100 times the population. There were more enslaved miners digging for lead in Galena than there were residents of Chicago.
     So how did the Erie Canal push Chicago to the forefront?
     The canal meant a ship could sail across the Atlantic Ocean, pass New York City, travel 150 miles up the Hudson and transfer cargo to flatboats at Albany. Those boats would transverse the state via canal, load goods and passengers back onto schooners at Buffalo to range across Lake Erie, up the Detroit River, across Lake St. Clair and the St. Clair River, up Lake Huron following the contours of Michigan, through the Straits of Mackinac down choppy Lake Michigan, to be deposited on its southernmost point, at Chicago, which on an 1825 French map in the Newberry Library was the name of the portage where Native-Americans carried their canoes from the Chicago to the Des Plaines rivers.
     If that sounds arduous, it was easy compared to the previous system — ox cart — unchanged since ancient Greece. Considered an engineering marvel on par with the pyramids, the Erie Canal cut shipping costs by 90%.
     Not everyone got it. President Thomas Jefferson, in a rare moment of short-sightedness, withheld federal funds, calling the canal idea "a little short of madness." New York Gov. DeWitt Clinton made it his personal project. Work on the canal began July 4, 1817, three days after Clinton took office.
     Some called it "Clinton's folly." Others immediately saw the canal's implications, including Nathaniel Pope, the Illinois territory's delegate to the House of Representatives.
     The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 set the northern border of Illinois as a continuation of Indiana's northern border, cutting Illinois off from access to Lake Michigan.
     Pope pressed Congress, already rattled by storms that would lead to the Civil War, arguing that being connected to the Great Lakes and the East, via the nascent Erie Canal, would tie Illinois to the Union.
     Without lake access, Illinois's proximity to the Mississippi might draw it into the camp of the restive South. Congress agreed and pushed the state's border 60 miles north.
     That's why Chicago is in Illinois rather than Wisconsin. What got it going as a city was the prospect of the goods of the world landing at the sand bar blocking the mouth of the Chicago River. Where would they go from there? What would be loaded for the return trip? The soldiers at Fort Dearborn got busy excavating the mouth of the river, while the federal government began developing the port of Chicago.
     Meanwhile, a dream that began when Joliet and Marquette visited Native Americans here in 1673 — a canal leading to the Mississippi — was put into motion: The Des Plaines River wasn't good for much beyond canoe traffic. But If a canal could be dug from the Chicago River, 96 miles south to the Illinois River at LaSalle. Then boats could continue into the Mississippi and down to New Orleans. The Erie Canal dropped Europe on Chicago's doorstep; the I & M Canal would invite South America, too.
     Such A canal cost money. had to be paid for. There was one readily available resource here: land. Chicago was surveyed and platted up so lots could be sold to finance a canal, plus land along the canal route.
      If you look at the original James Thompson Chicago map of August 1830, you'll recognize Loop streets — Wells, La Salle, Clark. And west of the river are two street names that hint why this is being done: Clinton, for the Erie-building governor of New York, and Canal, which kind of gives the game away.

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