Ohio & Erie Canal: The Infrastructure That Changed Ohio
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Transcript
Before railroads reorganized Ohio, the canal did.
The Ohio & Erie Canal was built between 1825 and 1832, linking Lake Erie at Cleveland with the Ohio River system and, through it, markets much farther away.
For farmers in early Ohio, transportation was often the difference between producing food and participating in a market economy.
A wagon could move only so much over bad roads.
A canal boat could move heavy goods much more efficiently.
The effect was enormous.
Cleveland and Akron grew.
Agricultural products moved outward.
Manufactured goods moved inward.
Land values changed.
Towns formed around locks and crossings.
The Towpath Trail now follows the old canal route, which creates a wonderful historical inversion.
A corridor built to move freight at the cutting edge of nineteenth-century infrastructure is now used by cyclists, runners and walkers.
But don't mistake the quiet water and stone locks for quaint scenery.
This was economic technology.
NPS identifies the Ohio & Erie Canal as nationally significant because it helped connect the U.S. interior with eastern markets and accelerated industrialization.
Americans often tell industrial history through factories.
The factory only works if raw materials can arrive and finished goods can leave.
The canal is the less glamorous machine underneath the machine.
The canal also altered time.
Farmers no longer had to think only in terms of local demand.
A crop could become a market commodity moving toward distant buyers.
Merchants could plan around more regular freight.
Towns along the canal gained new rhythms based on boat traffic, lock operations and commercial schedules.
Infrastructure changes behavior before people have a name for the social transformation.
Ohio did not simply gain a ditch filled with water.
It became more tightly connected to a national economy.