Building the St. Helena II: Rebirth of a Nineteenth-Century Canal Boat

Chapter 2. Ohio Canals

Chapter 2 Ohio Canals ••• Ohio was one of the earliest states to build canals. This wilderness frontierbecametheseventeenthstatein1803,butmassimmigrationbegan only after the War of 1812. In1817,justastheErieCanalwasbegun,Ohiostartedplanningamajor enterprise that would result in a network of over 813 miles of canals and make it the third most prosperous state in the Union. From 1810 to 1820, the state’s population had doubled to half a million settlers, mostly clustered along the Ohio River Valley. Ohio needed to provide access inland for settlers from Lake Erie in the north, Pennsylvania in the east, and the Ohio River in the south. Also, since Ohio was essentially an agricultural state, to access eastern produce markets, it needed connections to Pennsylvania and New York canals, a faster and more practical route than the long trip down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans, even with steamboats, which by 1811 were already paddling these rivers. Ohio’s canal system was begun during the 1818–22 term of Governor Ethan Allen Brown (1776–1852), elected after a canal-building campaign. Withhisinitiative,in1822theOhiolegislaturecreatedacanalcommission to hire surveyors and engineers to study possible routes from Lake Erie to the Ohio River. The commission hired James L. Geddes, the same man whosurveyedtheErieCanal.Hesurveyedfiveroutesvianaturalriverssystems ,allofwhichcrossedthenorth-southcontinentaldivideandrequired . 13 . Gantz text.indb 13 6/25/12 3:09 PM 14 building the st. helena ii summit-level water supply from lakes. Two—the first via the Black and Muskingum (Killbuck Branch) Rivers and the second via the Grand and Mahoning Rivers—were totally impractical. Three remained: in the east, the Muskingum (Cuyahoga Branch) and Cuyahoga; in the central region, to connect to Columbus, the state capital since 1816, the Sandusky and Scioto;andinthewest,theGreatMiamiandMaumee.Geddesconcluded, however,thattherewasinsufficientwateronthedividebetweentheScioto and Sandusky Rivers, and so this central route was abandoned as well. On February 4, 1825, the Ohio legislature passed the Canal Act, which authorized the construction of the Ohio & Erie Canal, “to provide for the internal improvement of the State of Ohio by navigable canals.”1 It was a circuitous route; the canal was to start at Portsmouth on the Ohio River, head north along the Scioto River to a point eleven miles south of Columbus,theneastthroughtheLickingValleytoNewark,andnorthup theMuskingum,Tuscarawas,andCuyahogaRiverstoClevelandonLake Erie.TheactalsoapprovedtheMiamiCanalfromCincinnationtheOhio River to Dayton on the Miami River, with the hope that it could later be extendednorthwardtoToledoasdevelopmentproceededontheOhio& ErieCanal.LawmakersinColumbusweremollifiedbytheauthorization of an additional eleven-mile “feeder” canal connecting the capital to the Ohio & Erie Canal. The State was authorized to appropriate property for construction where required. Even before work began, real estate values along proposedroutesincreasedsignificantlyastheStateacquiredproperty .Many landowners generously donated property to insure that the canal would benefit them. For example, near Portage Summit, Gen. Simon Perkins (1771–1844), president of the Western Reserve Bank, and Paul Williams (d.1828)surveyedandplattedanewtown,tobecalledAkron,andoffered canal commissioners land for a turning basin and a right-of-way directly through the town. Gantz text.indb 14 6/25/12 3:09 PM ohio canals 15 Gantz text.indb 15 6/25/12 3:09 PM 16 building the st. helena ii On July 4, 1825, at Licking Summit, near Newark, Ohio, Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York, the champion of the Erie Canal, and Ohio governor Jeremiah Morrow (1771–1852) led a groundbreaking ceremony for the Ohio & Erie Canal, three months before the completion of the Erie Canal. Why was Clinton there? Because New Yorkers saw the Ohio CanalasanextensionoftheErieCanal,providingathousand-milewaterway from the Hudson River to Buffalo on Lake Erie, where lake steamers couldreachCleveland,andthence,bytheOhio&ErieCanal,totheOhio River and south. Many New York financiers had bought Ohio bonds to construct the canal and had a vested interest in its success. Less than three weeks later, on July 21, the two governors participated in similar groundbreaking ceremonies in Middletown, Ohio, for a twentyfive -mile Miami Canal south to Cincinnati. The latter would be completed in 1828 and by 1830 would extend northward to Dayton, another seventeen miles. Work began in 1825 on the Ohio & Erie Canal from Portage Summit near Akron to Cleveland on Lake Erie, which at that time had only about twohundredresidents.Thiswasoneofthemostcriticalanddifficultparts ofthecanal.Thefirstthirty-eightmilesfromLakeErietoPortageSummit at Akron required forty-four lift locks to raise the canal a total of 395 feet, twenty-one of them in the last two miles before the summit, fifteen in a single mile, and seven in a steep half-mile “staircase” in Akron, known as Cascade Locks. Each lock in the staircase raised the canal ten feet, for a total rise of seventy feet...