 who laid out the route, were judges whose experience in surveying was in settling boundary disputes; Geddes had only used a surveying instrument for a few hours. Canvass White was a 27-year-old amateur engineer who talked Clinton into letting him go to Britain at his own expense to study the canal system there. Nathan Roberts was a mathematics teacher and land speculator. Yet these men "carried the Erie Canal up the Niagara escarpment at Lockport, maneuvered it onto a towering embankment to cross over Irondequoit creek, spanned the Genesee River for it on an awesome aqueduct, and carved a route for it out of the solid rock between Little Falls and Schenectady—and all of those venturesome designs worked precisely as planned." (Bernstein, p. 381)
Construction continued at an increased rate as new workers arrived. But when the canal reached Montezuma Marsh (at the outlet of Cayuga Lake west of Syracuse), over 1,000 workers died of swamp fever and construction stopped. Work continued on the downhill side towards the Hudson, and when the marsh froze in winter, the crews worked to complete the section across the swamps.
The middle section from Utica to Salina (Syracuse) was completed in 1820 and traffic on that section started up immediately. The eastern section, from Brockport to Albany, opened on September 10, 1823, to great fanfare.
In 1824, before the Canal was completed, a detailed Pocket Guide for the Tourist and Traveler, Along the Line of the Canals, and the Interior Commerce of the State of New York, was published for the benefit of travelers and land speculators — possibly America's first tour guide.
After Montezuma Marsh, the next obstacle was crossing the Niagara Escarpment, an wall of hard dolomitic limestone, to rise to the level of Lake Erie. The route followed the channel of a creek that had cut a ravine steeply down the escarpment, with two sets of five locks in a series, giving rise to the community of Lockport. These lift-locks had a total lift of , exiting into a deeply cut channel. The final leg had to be cut through another limestone layer, the Onondaga ridge. Much of that section was blasted with black powder. The inexperience of the crews often led to accidents, and sometimes rocks falling on nearby homes.
Two villages competed to be the terminus: Black Rock, on the Niagara River, and Buffalo, at the eastern tip of Lake Erie. Buffalo expended great energy to widen and deepen Buffalo Creek to make it navigable and to create a harbor at its mouth. Buffalo won over Black Rock, and grew into a large city, swallowing its former competitor.
Work was completed on October 26, 1825. The event was marked by a statewide "Grand Celebration," culminating in successive cannon shots along the length of the canal and the Hudson, which took 90 minutes to travel from Buffalo to New York City. A flotilla of boats, led by Governor Dewitt Clinton aboard the Seneca Chief, sailed from Buffalo to New York City in ten days. Clinton then ceremonially poured Lake Erie water into New York Harbor to mark the "Wedding of the Waters."
The Canal began on the west side of the Hudson River at Albany, and ran north to Troy, where the Champlain Canal branched off. At Cohoes it turned west along the south shore of the Mohawk River, crossing to the north side at Crescent and again to the south at Rexford Flats. The Canal continued west near the south shore of the Mohawk River all the way to Rome, where the Mohawk turns north.
At Rome, the Canal continued west parallel to Wood Creek, which flows from Oneida Lake, and turned southwest and west cross-country to avoid the lake. From Canastota west it ran roughly along the north (lower) edge of the Onondaga Escarpment, passing through Syracuse and Rochester. At Lockport the Canal turned southwest to rise to the top of the Niagara Escarpment, using the ravine of Eighteenmile Creek. The Canal continued south-southwest to Pendleton, where it turned west and southwest, mainly using the channel of Tonawanda Creek. From Tonawanda south to Buffalo it ran just east of the Niagara River, emptying out in