Erie Canal, 200 Today, Made New York a Global City

Two hundred years ago today, a commissioner named Josh Hathaway stuck a shovel into the ground in upstate Oneida County, utterly changing the fate of New York City. Hathaway moved the first mound of dirt in the epic creation of the Erie Canal. Eight years later, when the 363-mile waterway was done, New York was well into its transformation from America's fourth largest port to its dominant commercial hub — a position it has held ever since.

By connecting the Great Lakes to the Hudson River, the canal unlocked the massive natural resources of the Midwest  — grain, timber, iron ore  — and brought them to markets on the East Coast and in Europe. All of that stuff flowed through New York City, which saw a boom in shipping and the industries that support it, including banking and insurance.

So on a day when the United States traditionally celebrates its birthday, New Yorkers would do well to hold up a glass — or shoot off a bottle rocket or eat too many hot dogs or whatever you like to do on The Fourth of July — in honor of a public works project that made their town incalculably more prosperous and powerful. That is, before the railroads came along and, in the name of the kind of progress that the canal once represented, rendered it it obsolete, an afterthought in our history.

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection