Ohio and Erie Canal -- A Living Monument

“But what of the future upon our canals?
How can we expect them to be?
Pollution and traffic upon all our roads
May yet be the obvious key
To launch a renaissance of waterways, old,
And those that are still to be made.
With bold inspiration and vision that’s sound
We soon could return them to trade.”

– From “Where the Working Boats Went” by Tony Haynes

What do you know about the Ohio and Erie Canal on the Westside of the Scioto River. Its just a stinky old, stagnant ruin of the past, right? It represents a lost dream of bygone days, doesn't it? But, wait just a minute. Researching this local waterway reveals another perspective … one of great industry and commercial growth. In truth, this channel was an Ohio conduit of imagination and opportunity. 

By 1820, 580,000 residents were estimated to be living in Ohio, and most of them were involved in agriculture. Despirt the growth in this early American frontier, Ohio was one of the poorest states in the Union. The problem with modern agriculture of the day was that farmers had more produce than they could use and no way to move it beyond their local communities. Moving the excess produce beyond the local markets, and into the cities required some means of transport that was at least a little bit more reliable and that wouldn't eat up all the profits.

Before the arrival of the first canal, the only way farmers, manufacturers, and everyday travelers had for getting anywhere distant were poorly constructed roads that were often impassible during the winter and wet spring months. The much anticipated National Road had only reached Wheeling, West Virginia by 1817 and it would be another 16 years before it reached Columbus, Ohio.

For Ohioans in the early 1800s the logical solution seemed to be a canal system that would connect the two major bodies of water in Ohio: Lake Erie, that connected farmers with the east coast, with the Ohio River, that connected them with points South all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Canal construction would be very expensive and somewhat slow moving; however, the dream of growth would spur the construction of a modern marvel.

When Ohio was a mere 21 years old, the legislature authorized funding for the Ohio and Erie Canal. The principal goals of the canal for the State of Ohio were to serve as many voters as possible and connect the Ohio River with Lake Erie as quickly and cheaply as possible without throwing the state into bankruptcy.

On February 4, 1825, the Ohio Legislature passed "An Act to provide for the Internal Improvement of the State of Ohio by Navigable Canals.” Construction of the Ohio and Erie Canal began in 1825. It would be a course that would stretch 308 miles between Cleveland and Portsmouth.

“For every mile of the canal, an Irishman is buried.”

– A popular expression associated with the Ohio and Erie Canal

Work on the canal was grueling and dangerous. Laborers used picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows to dig the watercourse. And, after the canal was dug, it also needed to be lined with clay to make it waterproof.

Laborers – mostly German and Irish immigrants – worked 12 hour days in return for thirty cents and a ration of whiskey. Malaria. dubbed “Canal Fever.” claimed the lives of hundreds of young men as they died from various microbes festering in the mud and stagnant water. There was a time when as many as six deaths were recorded on average for every mile dug. Many unfortunate souls were buried in shallow, unmarked graves along the canal, or in mass paupers graves at nearby cemeteries.

Construction of the hundreds of sandstone locks in the canal was tremendously difficult. The locks were constructed to bridge the 1,200-foot elevation difference between the lake and river. Each stone in a lock weighed between two and four tons and had to be set in place using a system of ropes and pulleys. Lock walls were five feet thick at the base and tapered to four feet at the top.

In many spots along its route, the canal had to cross other rivers and streams. At these locations, aqueducts carried the canal over the stream. Culverts, barrel-shaped channels, carried small streams under the canal. Turn-around and pull-off basins allowed boats to unload cargo, make repairs, stay the night, or simply turn around.

When completed in 1832, the Ohio and Erie Canal had cost $4,244,540. This averaged just less than $15,000 per mile. The finished canal consisted of 146 lift locks, 7 guard locks, 14 aqueducts, 203 culverts, and 14 dams. The waterway soon became a major catalyst for the state's economic growth.

Commerce on the canal soon flourished. Although the size of the locks – 90' long in the chamber and 15' wide, with a pair of wooden gates at either end – limited the size of wooden canal boats, business boomed.

The canal held four feet of water to support canal boats carrying many tons of cargo traveling at about three miles per hour. (A speed limit of 4 mph was enacted by the State of Ohio to protect the canal banks from erosion.) Everything from agricultural products to stone and lumber floated on the canal.

A canal boat crew was a colorful sight. The boats were usually manned by a team of three people: the captain, the bowsman or helmsmen (Who steered the boat from the bow using a very long wooden stick connected to the rudder called the tiller.), and the teamster or “hoggee” who walked behind the horses to keep them moving. Horses and mules walking along the towpath pulled the boats up and down the canal. By the way, President James A. Garfield was an Ohio hoggee when he was just 16 years old.

The boat captain – sometimes in a military-style jacket and stovepipe hat – usually owned the vessel and often lived aboard with his family. A 9x12-ft. cabin, located near the stern of the boat, served as the family’s home. Mothers and daughters often performed the domestic activities of the boat such as preparing meals or washing clothes in the canal, and young males often served as mule skinners. Parents often tied the youngest children to a post located in the center of the boat to prevent them from falling into the canal.

Canal passenger boats, also called “packet boats,” transported 40 to 60 passengers. In November 1834, President John Q. Adams wrote of the experience of “locking through” on the Ohio and Erie Canal:

“The most uncomfortable part of our navigation is caused by the careless and unskillful steering of the boat in and through the locks, which seemed to be numberless, upwards of 200 of them on the canal. The boat scarcely escapes a heavy thump on entering every one of them. She strikes and grazes against their sides, and staggers along like a stumbling nag.”

Here is another passenger’s objectionable description of a trip aboard a canal boat, which had a gentlemen’s cabin, a ladies’ cabin and dressing room, a barroom, and a kitchen:

“Into this space were stowed 35 men, 19 women and 10 children … During the day, the beds, consisting of mattresses, sheets, pillows and cotton quilts, were piled one above another … The smell of animal effluvia, when they were unpacked, was truly horrid ... they were saturated with the perspiration of every individual who had used them since the commencement of the season.”

(Excerpted from Ohio and Its People, George W. Knepper, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1989, pg. 155. 2.)

Still, the difficulties Ohioans faced with the canals paled in comparison to the advantages that they garnered. Most importantly, the cost to ship goods from the East Coast to Ohio and vice versa declined tremendously from 125 dollars per ton of goods to twenty-five dollars per ton of goods. It took eighty hours to travel from Cleveland to Portsmouth along the Ohio and Erie Canal. While horseback was much quicker, it also cost a great deal more. The cost on the canal boat was $1.70 per person.

The canals enjoyed a period of grand prosperity from the 1830s to the early 1860s, with maximum revenue between 1852 and 1855. During the 1840s, Ohio was the third most prosperous state, owing much of that growth to the canal.

In the canal heyday, boat companies operated fleets of vessels, hiring captains and crew. Captains could have a high professional standing in the community. Solo owner-operators became the norm, and their social status slipped. Entire families began to live and work on boats.

Early boats had enclosed cabins and carried cargo packed in barrels and crates. Later, boats had open decks to carry more bulk goods. They also increased in tonnage, responding to their ability to compete with railroads to haul the bulkiest goods like lumber and coal.

Gov. William Seward of New York proclaimed “the highest attainable equality” would come with canals. Ohio canal commissioners believed “the moral and intellectual condition of a people” would improve. And, the canals surely did deliver ... at least for a time.

(Jennie Vasarhelyi. “Illustrating stories of Ohio & Erie Canal.” West Side Leader. May 15, 2014)

In addition to upgrading the equality of rural Ohio citizens, the Ohio and Erie Canal greatly changed the lives of those who were interacting through trade. People now had increased access to consumer goods, so they could buy rather than make many of the things they used. Manufactured goods had been pretty much unknown on the frontier until transportation costs became cheaper. These were the first inklings of emergence of the consumer economy.

The canal also stimulated local business growth along its route. It was wide enough for two-way traffic, but since locks could only handle one boat at a time, traffic was bound to back up, just as it does on modern freeways. People did not like having to sit around and wait to "lock through," so many stores and taverns began to develop near the canal.

Cities grew and even sprang up along the Ohio and Erie Canal. The canal almost instantly turned Cleveland into a major commercial center. The city became the hub of a continental transportation network that connected with New York City via Lake Erie and New York’s Erie Canal as well as with the nation’s developing frontier areas and New Orleans via the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

Simon Perkins realized the potential for business near the canal. So, in 1825, as construction of the canal was beginning, he founded the city of Akron. He knew that with 16 locks placed in close proximity there would be plenty of opportunity for development. Akron would evolve into one of the major cities in northeast Ohio.

The locks on the canal even spurred industrial development in the state. Each lock served as a water elevator, capable of raising and lowering boats heavily laden with cargo. Because of the elevation change, usually eight feet, areas near locks became a great source of waterpower for industry. Saw mills, grist mills, and woolen mills sprang up at locks and other areas of the canal where the water could power their machinery.

For decades, the Ohio & Erie Canal was the state’s principal mode of transportation not only for goods but also for people. By 1840 Ohio had grown from one of the poorest states in the Union to the third most prosperous. The growth and development spurred by the construction of the canal system is the foundation of Ohio's economy today.

It wasn’t until the 1870s, when railroads became the faster, cheaper way to move folks and freight, that the canal ultimately began its decline. By the early 20th century, much of it was abandoned altogether.

Ohio’s canals came to an abrupt halt in March of 1913. That spring had a severe snowmelt, flooding and destroying towpaths, locks, aqueducts, you-name-it. Since canal expenditures were already outpacing revenue, it was clear it was time to throw in the towel.

The Ohio and Erie Canal was then used as a water supply for local industries, some to this day. Many of the old locks and sections of the canal have been preserved as National Historic Landmarks. Other parts of the waterways are now tourist attractions or reserved for parks and recreational uses. In Ohio, they are usually run by the National Park Service or Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Lucasville Canal History

The subject of canals had, for State Senator Robert Lucas, a local as well as a general interest. Considering the fact that the projected Ohio Canal was to run along the Scioto River through Pike County (his home) and connect the town of Portsmouth with Lake Erie, he was more than enthusiastic in its support.

Lucas thus became one of the most prominent advocates of general canal legislation and other policies of internal improvement in the State. He was Chairman of the Joint Canal Committee that prepared and drafted the bill authorizing the construction of the Ohio Canal, and for years he continued to hold this position on the committee.

It should be established that during that time the matter of canals and schools were positively and politically linked together. The passage of this law was due to the tactful and political management of the friends of eduction in the legislature, who united their forces with the friends of internal improvement. As a result, canals and public schools were provided for in Ohio by the same legislature. Robert Lucas surely understood how “scratching the opposition's back” could lead to compromise.

As published in the Ohio Educational Monthly, Volume 71 (circa 1923) ...

“The sight of an Ohio canal, even though abandoned because its days of usefulness are gone, should still arouse in the minds of all who love the public schools grateful memories of that day nearly one hundred years ago when the support of the friends of canals made possible the beginning of the public school system of Ohio.”

The monumental Ohio Education Bill of 1825 required that Townships be laid off into school districts; school officers be elected to manage the schools; teachers be certificated to teach by a county board of examiners; and most important and significant of all, a tax of one-half mill upon the property of the several counties of the State be levied to produce an annual fund for the instruction of youth.

The Ohio and Erie Canal may have led to a relatively short-lived era of physical conveyance; however, it helped establish fundamental opportunities that blossomed into vital realities. This vision and challenge of a watery link – a passage that spurred trade, transportation, and population – opened the hearts and minds of Buckeyes to realizing achievements that rest at the base of Ohio, Scioto County, and Lucasville. Indeed, education remains the greatest asset of the people.