Erie Canal

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Erie Canal, the waterway connecting Lake Erie to the Hudson River, New York City, and the Atlantic Ocean. The canal slashed the time and cost it took to transport people and products across upstate New York, helping to hasten westward expansion and industrialization and built New York City into the financial capital of the United States.

Matthew Smith, a professor of history at Miami University of Ohio, wrote about the Erie Canal for The Conversation. Great Lakes Now News Editor Lisa John Rogers spoke with smith about how the canal shaped the world we live in. You can find that article and more below.

The Erie Canal: How a ‘big ditch’ transformed America’s economy, culture and even religion

Two hundred years ago, the Erie Canal was often derided as a ‘folly.’ Yet the waterway went on to transform the American frontier.

Reflections on the Erie Canal

In 1825, the state of New York completed the Erie Canal. Today, the singular historic purpose of the canal has been replaced by a broader significance. Together, the Erie, Champlain, Oswego, and Cayuga-Seneca canals serve communities in ways unimaginable to their creators. Now, we reflect on the two-hundred year journey of the Erie Canal and contemplate its future.

Erie: The canal that made America

“Erie: The Canal That Made America” is a one-hour documentary, marking the bicentennial of the start of construction of the Erie Canal when surveyors and excavators began linking a young United States’ east to its western frontier.

You’ve never heard Erie Canal history told like this

Step inside a personal canal-side museum in Lyons, NY, where one woman shares her vivid memories of growing up along the Erie Canal. From lock tenders and tugboats to horseshoes and history, Allyn Perry’s reflections capture a way of life few remember—and even fewer preserve.

The Erie Canal paved the way for immigration to Wisconsin

In 1835, a decade after the canal was finished, there were only a few thousand non-native people living in Wisconsin. “By 1850 there were 305,000,” author Laurie Lawlor said recently on “The Larry Meiller Show.”