New York’s Erie Canal Celebrates Bicentennial

If you were to drive around the Empire State today, it's hard to imagine how difficult it would've been to travel around one of the greatest states in the world 200 years ago, but that was a daily fact.

If you were to travel from New York City to Buffalo in 1824, it would take you more than two weeks in a stagecoach to get from the Big Apple to the Queen City.

But, something tremendous happened in that every next year in 1825 that cut that travel time down by more than half, and now, 200 years later, the contributions the Erie Canal made to America are one of the key things that give us the world we have today.

Spearheaded by DeWitt Clinton, the 6th Governor of New York, the Erie Canal was an engineering marvel that took just about 8 years to build, cutting through more than 363 miles of the Empire State wilderness to open the west to the world.

The 8-year construction project developed 83 canal locks, dug through the Niagara Escarpment, on the way to elevating boats more than 500 feet from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. The project, which cost $7,143,789 in 1825 dollars (which is $233,779,412.63 in 2025).

Now, 200 years later, we celebrate what the Erie Canal has brought us.

Not only did the canal help the City of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Rome develop, but it also truly opened the West to development and gave us access to cities like Detroit, Chicago, and beyond.

Who knew that Clinton's Big Ditch would mean so much to the world?