in the late 19th century. In Nantucket Sound, fog, ice, and crazy currents swallowed up almost 700 ships in the last quarter of the 19th century. A canal would make transportation and trade faster and safer. A steamboat leaving New York at 5 p.m. could make Boston by 8 a.m. the next day.

Two men took on the challenge, the brilliant engineer William Barclay Parsons and the banker August Belmont. They had teamed up to build and bankroll the New York subway, which opened in 1904, and reunited to build the Cape Cod Canal, which Belmont agreed to tackle for $12 million and open as a privately operated toll waterway (the US Army Corps of Engineers took over control and eliminated the toll in 1928). In a speech todividing the canal, where Belmont collected water from both sides into two small bottles and poured them out together so they blended into one stream. Three months later, on a warm July morning, a fleet of ships gathered in New Bedford and thousands of people lined the canal shores. With Parsons and Belmont aboard a steamer named The Rose Standish, a final wedge was removed, and canal water rushed through, ripping up rocks, trees, and sand, as if it had been held back angrily for centuries. Which it had.

Nina Heald Webber Cape Cod Canal Collection/Historic New England

The canal opened in July 1914 with great fanfare. People line the banks in Bourne and Sandwich to catch a glimpse of the parade of ships to celebrate the opening. In later