I'm really glad you did the Erie Canal. As a child in elementary school (in NY), we learned about the building of the canal. But, it didn't really register. About 15 years ago, we visited Niagara Falls. On a drizzly day, we decided to tour the canal from Lockport. What an eye-opener! 323 miles dug through dense NY forest, plus 18 aqueducts and 83 locks, using nothing but picks, shovels, horses, oxen and black powder -- in 7 years! Amazing!

I live near Buffalo NY and I never realized how little people know about the Erie Canal in America till I got older lol. My sister also lives in Lockport!

Bonus fact. Rochester Ny was originally known as Flour City, due to the amount of flour produced and shipped there on the Erie Canal. Now Rochester is known as the Flower City for its Lilac Trees that flower every spring.

Having grown up in Buffalo, I really enjoyed this look at a substantial part of our heritage. The Welland Canal, which cuts across the Niagara Peninsula from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, avoiding Niagara Falls essentially brought an end to the Barge Canals relevance. Not long ago, the original western terminus of the Erie Canal was restored in Buffalo as a tourist and recreation hub in downtown Buffalo. Thank You for look at an important part of our history.

I live in upstate NY and The Erie Canal runs through my hometown. It’s perfectly level (except for the locks) so the “tow path” is great for riding bikes and the walking/jogging. The local schools rowing teams practice and race in it and high school students are known to jump into it from bridges for fun. In my town we had a drunk driver mistake it for the road (where it runs parallel to one) and he drove his car into it.

I am from Irondequoit (something like 50 spellings). The canal combined with the water power of the Genesee River turned Rochester into a grain milling hub - hence the nick name "flour city". This was later changed to "flower city" with it's many nurseries in the late 1800's. Keep up the good work.

I grew up swimming in the canal. Jumping off the locks. So much fun. I've been all through the old canal bed and into Rochester's abandonned subway tunnels that run in a double aqueduct above the Genesee River but below the canal.. Yeah.. It's pretty cool..

Oregon may be roughly the size of England, but it has the Cascades Mountain range splitting it. The Cascades are the height of the Alps. Nothing is more shocking to an American of the west, as the small size of Europe’s mountains and the short distances between major cities. My parents took some friends from England on a drive to Reno . They were flabbergasted by the vast emptiness. When you look on an American map, named ‘cities’ may be no more than a gas station & convenience market. My uncles ranch was in a county larger than Wessex and one of three mapped locations was such a gas mart with an elderly couple cheerfully dispensing goods. The other two cities were smaller than three thousand.

I read a great article once about construction of the Erie Canal that argued it was also the birth of American Engineering as a science. They invented horse powered machines that were capable of pulling up mature oak trees by the roots.

Some of the arms of the canal are paved and turned into major interstates that still bring goods across the northeast. I live in Binghamton NY which is the convergence of the Susquehanna River and the Chenango River. Our rivers no longer transport goods but the link to the Erie Canal was paved and Binghamton is the intersection of Interstates 81, 88, and 86. A center of river trade continues to be a center as you can get anywhere from those 3 highways.

In the village of Medina, NY Culvert Road passes underneath the canal.

I grew up in/around Schenectady, NY. Erie Blvd., a main street through town, used to be the Erie Canal. All of the cross streets used to be on bridges, and in places you can still see the tops of doorways and windows bricked up just above sidewalk level - they used to be on the canal level and when it was filled in to bring the level up to the other streets they were sealed up. I remember these being especially visible on the buildings at the corner with State St. Up until not to many years ago there still used to be some grain silos behind the Wendy's down near the GE gates, which I was always told dated back to the canal days. A lot of the old canal in that area is buried under I890 and the roads around it, but if you ride the Mohawk Hudson Bikeway out of Schenectady County Community College it picks up the route of the canal down by Rice Rd. You basically ride along the old towpath and will see the ruins of some old locks along the way. The canal gets buried again by the other end of I890 when it gets close to the river, but if you keep along the bike trai it picks up again near River Rd on the other side. What looks like some kind of drainage ditch between River Rd and the Bikeway is the old canal. In the other direction, when the path of the canal leaves Erie Blvd. and eventually is picked up by Aqueduct Rd, it runs down to where Balltown Road crosses the Mohawk River, and you can see the stone arches to the side of the road bridge which used to carry the canal across the river. This is the 'longest' aqueduct shown at the 10:00 mark. On the other side where the Schenectady Yacht Club is, they have a boat lift on a little 'branch' from the river. That branch is the old canal, and the boat lift is the basin for an original lock from 1842. Where the Rivers Casino now sits was formerly a GE facility, and before that it was the American Locomotive plant where the Big Boy was constructed. One of the buildings still had a faded 'AMERICAN LOCOMOTIVE' painted on the brickwork up near the roof until it was knocked down. I was fascinated by all of the remains and ruins of the old canal, and later railroads, growing up in the area. Much of it has since vanished, but I see they've vastly extended the bike trails along the old canal and now you can bike hundreds of miles along the old towpaths.

As one German girl says. In Europe travel is talked about by distance and in America its talked about in time of travel.

I’m from Fairport, NY. Always loved going to the Canal Days celebration. I grew up playing by that canal all summer. Great piece of history to have as a playground.

I'm from Albany area. Growing up we learned of the locks and canal system. Even took a class trip on a boat through 2 Locks. My grandmother's relative use to pull barges leading the ox or horse. And my other grandmothers great grandfather came here from Ireland and they settled in Utica and Rome to work digging the canal.

My father's ancestors were carpenters in Upstate NY building wagon, boats and buildings when the Erie Canal was proposed. They ended up building barges, locks and buildings for it then for the canals in Ohio and Indiana. My father's branch went up to Warrick County, Michigan to work on a proposed canal that was cancelled shortly after their arrival. They decided to settle down there building boats and wagons. My father's grandfather was a trim carpenter and cabinet maker that decided he could make more money in Chicago so moved there in 1870.

The photo used around 12:14 is from Rochester looking north along the Genesee River and dates no earlier than 1936. The white building in the lower right is the Rundel Library. In this picture, the "trench" just south and east of the library is the original canal bed. the bridge just north of the library was the aqueduct, which ran at the level of the smaller arches. By 1936, that section of canal bed was in use with a relatively short-lived subway system that ran from 1927 to 1956. On a side note, you might find the Fairport Lift Bridge an interesting related project for one of your other channels. It is angled on all three axes.

I live pretty close to the canal, recently biked the entire thing. 1. Good job on the research. 2. The locks at Lockport still exist, 3. As does the aqueduct intersecting the Erie Canal and Genesee River.

My wife and I both grew up along the Erie Canal/New York State Barge Canal. (My wife in Oneida, between Syracuse and Rome; myself in Palmyra; prior to the canal, a community larger than Rochester, NY.) THANKYOU for a fine summary of the project and its impact. THESE DAYS, recovering and restoring parts of the historic canal and its supporting landscape have been funded to great effect by tolls from the New York State Thruway Authority. Tourism impact and a sense of longer term local culture have benefitted from the increased investment...across the length of Central Upstate New York.

The image at 5:21 of the "bustling New York City" is actually downtown Syracuse, NY, which boomed as a result of the Erie canal. This is Clinton Square, which is now a public fountain and ice skating rink in the winter. The building with the clocktower is still there as well. The section of the Erie canal shown in this image is location of the modern day Erie Boulevard, which runs through the city. Great video, excellent work as always!

Just a little clarification (i live in Buffalo) I know it wont be reedited but Brockport is about 50mi east of Lockport (which is on the map) also the Genesee River is another 20mi east of that. Then the Irondequoit Creek is another 5-10miles east of that. So i think just a little of the script is out of order. The crossings of those rivers would have happened during the Albany to Brockport construction.

Assuredly, you meant the War of 1812 delayed the Canal, not the "American Civil War"!

I live in a suburb of Rochester, right near Irondequoit Creek. Sometimes I go on a road that goes along The Great Embankment. When I was younger I played in a park with the Irond. Creek through it. The change into the Barge Canal had some of the water parts in Rochester removed. In fact, part of I490 in the city goes over a lock and there are a few locks nearby that are mostly drained - they are filled with swamp - and are just crumbling stone.

'i've got a mule, her name is Sal, 15 years on the Erie canal. she's a good old worker and a good old pal, 15 years on the Erie canal. we've hauled some barges in our day, filled with lumber coal and hay, and we know every inch of the way from Albany to Buffalo. Words to a song we learned in grade school in Ohio in the 60's.

What also helped with the success was the existence of extensive canals in the Midwest in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. They just weren't as well known.

I grew up in a town on the Eerie canal and I used to walk through the woods to school and I would walk along part of the site of the original eerie canal that was drained of water. It's amazing to see that something I learned about so much in school as a child and grew up right next to is a large enough historical achievement to be featured on megaprojects

You took my suggestion! I grew up with The Miami Erie canal in my backyard. It connected Lake Erie to Cincinnati. My grandmother's family had general store that was supplied by the canal when she was very young. It blows my mind that until I was 21 I Had a living relative that saw horse drawn canal boats being used for business until 1913. My great Aunt ran the general store until mid 80'. She had a hand pump for water in the middle of the kitchen and used an outhouse until she moved into assisted living. He store was in Newport Ohio which is about 30 miles South of Grand Lake Saint Marys. At one time it was the world's largest Man Made lake. I believe it is still the World's largest man made lake that was built without power equipment.

I grew up along the canal and take a lot of pride in it being a part of my life. I can’t count the number of miles I’ve walked, biked and ran along it’s tow path between Rochester and Buffalo. Thanks for educating the masses about this incredible feat of ingenuity and engineering.

Simon, how about a video on the Welland Canal and St. Laurence Seaway? They're the modern replacement for the Erie Canal.

Fun fact: the Erie Canal is not actually visible in the photo at 12:12! The canal's former aqueduct (the second closest bridge to the camera), which allowed it to traverse the Genesee River, was turned into the Broad Street Bridge after the canal was re-routed south of Rochester. Housed in the canal's former bed was the city's trolley system, then its subway system, with a road for pedestrians and vehicles built above it. The aforementioned waterway used to run through where the white-ish building near the bottom right corner of the photo is sitting and went south along what was then "South St. Paul Street", now simply "St. Paul Street".

an hour drive in America is what we call the work commute.

I was raised 2 blocks from the old Erie. It always amazed me how they could build this through such difficult terrain. I can imagine quietly passing through the wilderness in the 1800s. I wonder how many famous people cruised through my small town at the maximum speed of 4 mph

Another important waterway was the Illinois and Michican Canal that connected Lake Michigan at Chicago to the Mississippi. This completed a water route from NYC to the Gulf of Mexico.

Something people even in America don't realize is that upstate NY is covered in canal ruins! They're all over the place. Not just the Erie Canal but all of the side canals all over the state. Packing a picnic lunch for the day and driving out into the country to discover them, is a uniquely upstate NY pastime.

I grew up a few miles east of Rome. The Erie Canal was about a thousand feet across the road from our house. Four great transportation routes lay about a half mile from my front door. The Erie Canal, the Mohawk River, the NY Central RR -three tracks wide, and the NY Barge Canal. The Mohawk River was the original transportation thoroughfare as Native Americans could travel by canoe from Lake Ontario on Wood Creek to Rome, called De-O-Wain-Sta, (The Great Carrying Place). From there canoes were carried one to four miles to the Mohawk River that flowed to the Hudson River. As kids in the 1950’s and 1960’s we would play, hunt and fish in the Mohawk River. The canal was and is heavily overgrown with trees and undergrowth. It was a fun childhood.

Lockport native here. The canal was a great source of entertainment from fishing (don't eat them, toss em back), to swimming, to riding the lock gates as they opened and closed (late 60's and early 70's). A great place to grow up.

I used to live in Buffalo N.Y. and one of my favorite past times was to boat along the Erie Canal. A lot of cities and towns use it as a main feature for festivals and such. North Tonawanda and Tonawanda use the Canal to divide the Canal Fest up. A little festival held in mid summer. Very fun and entertaining.

Glad to see this video made - I pitched it in February, and grew up living with the Erie Canal in my back yard.

One bit you might mention: the canal made bulk transport possible fro NYC to Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago, Duluth and more. It really made sure that New York became the commercial capitol of the US.

An original and unexpanded section of the canal is right in my backyard. My village was built up around a dry dock and a few mills along the canal. The mills were powered a nearby stream, which passed under an aqueduct in the canal, to process grain that was being shipped on the canal. Today the canal towpath is now a great park, and will soon offer a complete walkway from Buffalo to Albany.

You should definitely do a mega project of how the Soviets moved their war industry to the Urals during WW2, I can only imagine how insane that was!

I remember my parents taking me sightseeing on the Erie Canal in the 70's and being very bored. It wasn't until many years later I understood the importance of this project

I grew up in Lockport NY, still living in the area. I'm retired and often go for long drives , posting pics on FB. I often go for long drives covering all of western NY. . Others are amazed by the landscape, architecture of New York outside of NYC. NY has Niagara Falls, lakes Erie and Ontario, the Adirondack mts, the fingerlakes....etc. The city of Buffalo is unique as it's a mega suburb. From downtown to farms is just a 30min drive. Along lake Ontario is renowned for its vineyards and orchards. Oh yea, and we get SNOW due to a phenomenon called "lake effect". . I just thought ppl should know what the other 95% of NY is like.... it's gorgeous, unique, and not all city

Grew up on the Erie Canal. In fact my family helped build many of the towns here in Western NY

I'm from Rome, NY! The canal was started there, where the Mohawk River turned north. The canal ran downwards in both directions from Rome, so a good source of water was needed to keep it full. The technology needed to make the Mohawk itself navigable did not exist, so the canal was separate. However, the upgraded "Barge" canal was within the river between Troy and Rome. (Why do these cities and others have these names? I was told that there was a traveling 'consultant' who would, for a fee, allow a town to reserve a name from his list.)

Very minor correction; Irondequoit Creek is in a southeast suburb of Rochester, NY and the Genesee River flows directly through the city of Rochester, NY. Irondequoit Creek still flows through a concrete culvert under the canal while the Genesee River is now an intersection with the canal, rather than the canal being carried over the river via an aqueduct. The old aqueduct still remains and is a fascinating adventure!

In the mid 1970's I was crew on a sailboat delivery from just south of Detroit, Michigan to Fort Meyers, Florida. We used the Eric Canal to get to the Hudson River. I remember a lot of locks, especially near the Hudson. From the Hudson to Delaware Bay, through another canal to Chesapeake Bay then down the Intercostal waterway to Florida, across Lake Okeechobee then down to Ft. Meyers. 3 months, in autumn, cold... wonderful!

Just looked it up, the time savings was huge! Before the canal, it took 15 to 45 days to travel the distance by wagon. After it took 9 days. The cost before for freight was about $125 a ton and after $6 a ton.

It's pretty crazy I'm watching this while driving right down Route 5S from Utica to Mohawk in Upstate New York Simon you really know how to make me feel at home

"In 1817, after a delay caused by the American Civil War..." Simon, that was way before the Civil War. The Civil War was in the 1860's.

I live near a section of the old Lake Champlain feeder canal system and go walking on the towpaths. It's still quite wonderful and some of the working lockes in our area provide tremendous fishing access. It was a sense of achievement of mine to see a trickle of water on Mount Marcy become the mighty Hudson River all being accomplished on foot and in a bit of remoteness. It's odd being a New Yorker who has only seen the city and never set foot within, but trod over the Adirondacks, including her 46 High peaks in all 4 seasons, then south and west on the rivers, the canal systems, in old mines, and above mentioned towpaths.

How cool! My Childhood home is right next to the Maumee-Wabash-Cannonbal canal, and now I live right next to the Ohio and Erie Canal. Bothe are practically in the backyards. Now they're both nature parks with the towpaths as trails for my 10k's. For people with no e xperience i canal building to build pathways longer than Europe, Very impressive. To quote the Chunnel episode, Engineering is a wonderful thing

Simon: An hour's drive is long for me. Me (an American): An hour's drive is across town

The impact of the Erie Canal on the lives of Chicagoans was about as profound as the impact of the internet. Chicagoans could engage in routine trade with the East Coast, and vice versa. It's impact on the Middle West was transformative.

The day it opened it cut the fright rate by a factor of 10. This caused a business development boom in NYC that turned it into the main city in the east. Also the operation of the canal created a huge number of jobs !

Worked and traveled the eastern half of Ohio last year. Evidence of the extensive canal system crisscrossed the landscape, running mostly parallel to roadways and rail beds. Likely unnoticed by most, ghosts of transportation past. Fascinating. Thanks for the excellent content 💫

There are a lot of towns in Michigan named after towns in Upstate New York: Rochester, Utica, Ithaca to name a few. You can see in these place names the settlement patterns, as people migrated along the canal and through the Great Lakes.

I live like 2 mins from a segment of it and the old locks that are dry are really cool to go explore

An old saying from WNY, at least my part in Rochester, is "dont jump through the cow" or "miss the cow." Meaning "look before you leap" sort of. It stems from the canal's days when it was used (legally) as a dumpster and farmers would throw dead livestock in. Rumor has it one hot day a kid jumped from a bridge to go swimming, but ended up landing on the decomposing carcass of a cow. Gotta love WNY.

I live on the Erie Canal in Tonawanda, NY, just north of Buffalo. When we first moved here, (1957) there was still extensive commerce in the form of barges hauling oil pushed by diesel powered tugboats. Very polluted water, but as time went on and the commerce declined, the water has gotten cleaner and it has since been promoted as a recreational waterway and is very busy during the summers. Every now and then while digging on the bank near the still visible mule path, I have found 'mule shoes', basically a small metal horseshoe probably discarded when mules were the preferred (and only) means of locomotion for the barges.

Here is a megaproject. The USS Monitor. She may not have been huge, but the impact on naval warfare was massive. She ended wooden sailing warships and warships with rows of guns, had more than 40 patentable components, and the world's first rotating turret ever to be used in battle. She is the true ancestor to all modern warships.

omg the slaughter of the city names is killing me lol.

Erie boulevard in Schenectady, NY used to be part of the original Erie canal before it was filled in. Now, the Mohawk river is part of the barge canal system. It's still used to transport bulk goods and promotes tourism.

Great for boating/camping, especially in the areas where there aren't many people. I try to boat this canal every summer and it's a very relaxing get away

"Low bridge, everybody down..."

I really enjoy watching your channel glad to see an episode of the Erie Canal Which is home for myself I live in upstate New York keep up the great work

I live in Pennsylvania and plan to ride the Erie Canal next year. Like many abandoned RR lines, the canal towpath has also been converted to a bike trail and I hear it's very nice with many B&B's along the way.

I live at the site of a flour mill in the middle of Ireland, sixty miles to Dublin, built in the 1770’s. The county was connected to Dublin by a canal before 1800. By the 1840’s my mill was essentially obsolete because it was cheaper to canal and sail Midwestern wheat to Dublin and grind the flour in steam powered mills in Dublin. This is the power of the Erie Canal on world commerce.

If you’re doing this you should definitely do the st. Laurence river in Canada/America

14:12 That's what I find the most incredible about all of this. To this day, NYC is one of the most prominent, rich, and powerful cities *in the world.* That started _with this canal._ 100%, without a doubt, if this canal had not been built, NYC would not have become _the_ trade hub between the entire interior/industrial midwest and all of Europe, and so it would have been just another minor east coast port city!

I go fishing in the canal here in S.E Indiana. Its barge days are long gone but you can still feel the history there.

I grew up with this practically in my back yard. Great video!!👍👍

Oregon is roughly size of the United Kingdom. We think of a 4hr drive as a day trip..

He meant to say the war of 1812, but it's understandable, he has so many videos!

As a resident of Weedsport and less then 500 yards from where it went through, I love this! Thank you!

...reading "Wedding of the Waters" by Peter Bernstein...excellent story of the Erie Canal and its long journey from a mere thought to completion in 1825 - and the impressive growth of both population and industry along its route in the 25 years from 1825 to 1860

Idea for a Megaproject: How Simon Whistler came to dominate the Internet.

Malaria also killed large numbers of people when the Rideau Canal was being built. All of the labourers died of the disease in the area around the village of Seeleys Bay. The area where the malaria occurred was in a marshy lake that was given the name Mosquito Lake(the name was later called Opinicon Lake because it was in poor taste to name the lake after the animals which killed the labourers).

I’m from Rome, NY! We are very proud of the fact that the Canal started there! Also Fort Stanwix is there. Revolutionary War Fort! Opened in 1976 for the BiCentennial!

A noble effort on some the pronouncements. Salina = Suh-LINE-uh Oswego = Os-WEE-go But you nailed the toughest ones in Onondaga and Irondequoit. 5 stars on the video. This was possibly the most enjoyable one so far, being from the Syracuse area.

To a Brit 100 miles is a long journey, and to an American 100 years is a long time.

Mega projects Suggestion: SS Normandie one of the largest and expensive(1,000,000,000 dollars adjusted for inflation) transatlantic liner built and a former blue riband holder and her lost in WW2 was also one of the biggest and expensive salvage operation ever overtaken at that time

Loved the video. I live in PA and the Canal had a pretty huge impact on the state economy which helped my area to rebuild after the Civil War. It was those same German masons that rebuilt the bridge burned in Wrightsville to stop the Confederate advance. I've got two video ideas for you: Mega Projects could cover the current efforts to plug up the millions of abandoned oil wells in the US and Canada. Side projects could cover the pig iron furnaces in Marietta, PA; coal mining in Centralia and logging industry along the Susquehanna River that enabled the creation of Pittsburgh's steel works and led to the Industrial Revolution.

Check out the Wabash and Erie/Indiana Central canal that runs through Indiana connecting the Ohio/Mississippi Rivers to Lake Erie. Grew up fishing in the canal 20 minutes north of Evansville where it connects to the Ohio River.

Got a mule her name is Sal... 15 miles on the Erie Canal...

The Erie Canal was postponed by the War of 1812 not the American Civil War.

I am from a town on the canal. Amsterdam NY. I remember taking school field trips to old abandoned locks.

If you ever do a reboot you should note the heritage sites as well as business ventures like Lock 32 which turn portions into white water kayak training. I think those are more interesting than basically detritus of other last portions. Still was a fun video because so much rich history of Buffalo is tied to the canal and making the city prosper

I wished that the Erie Canal tree stump puller would have had its 15 seconds of fame courtesy of Mr. Whistler.

my man simon! dropping another banger of a video. keep em coming

10:01 this picture was taken in rexford NY and my family keeps our boat in the old canal at the Schenectady yacht club. We don’t have a yacht unfortunately but it’s awesome to see this old picture. The aqueduct has since been removed but I can still tell exactly where this picture is being taken from. It’s from large cliffs that seem so out of place in upstate NY but it gives a great view of the area as a whole. Awesome history and I wish it was preserved better but you can still see its scar in the landscape if you watch for it. Really cool to see a video about it!

Living in the village at Lock 15 along the present day canal, I found this fascinating. Not only for the information held within but also the fact that Simon Whistler felt it important enough to make a video about it.

I don't think I've gotten to a video faster. But this is incredible, great video

Simon,please do a video about the original world trade center that was destroyed on september 11th,2001

Because I live in Schenectady and jog along the Erie Canal pathway everyday, I see the old locks quite a bit. It's been a lot of fun for my son and I over the years to climb down into the various locks and figure out just how they worked. Because of this I would have to rate this episode as by far my favorite!

There was also a section that ran down through Ohio, alongside the Tuscarawas river, connecting Lake Erie to the Ohio (and thereby to the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico). When I was a kid, in the eighties, the lock in Canal Fulton, at Lock 4 Park, was still operational, and was demonstrated in operation once a year, along with a historical canal boat that was pulled by mules.

Nice! One of my recommendations made it!

@2:42 When Simon leaves out Wisconsin feelsbadman

Speaking of canals, canals were the original obsession of the US and it wasn’t just the Erie Canal that was built during this time. Virginia had a number of canals built, the most notable of which was the James River and Kanawha Canal. Though it was not completed, it still managed to traverse much of the rough terrain of the James River and made it was far west as Buchanan, Virginia. Parts of the canal are still in use to this day, though much of it was destroyed and abandoned over time, especially in the city of Richmond where some of the remains can still be seen near Tredagar Ironworks.

Speaking of the Erie Canals further expansion, there was the Ohio & Erie Canal of 308 miles from Cleveland to The Ohio River at Portsmouth and the Wabash & Erie Canal which stretched 497 miles from Toledo Ohio on Lake Erie to the Ohio River at Evansville, Indiana. The Ohio & Erie continued in service until the early 20th century. Both of these routes had their business curtailed by the rise of the railroads, which, ironically they helped to construct by carrying rail and other equipment.