 steps to improve navigation on the Mohawk. But the company proved that private financing was inadequate.
In 1798 the Niagara Canal Company was incorporated.
The advocate who finally got the Canal built was entrepreneur Jesse Hawley. He envisioned growing huge quantities of grain in the upstate New York plains, then largely unsettled, for sale on the Eastern Seaboard. But he went bankrupt trying to ship it to the coast. While in Canandaigua debtors' prison, he started pressing for the construction of a canal along the Mohawk valley.He had strong support from Joseph Ellicott, agent for the Holland Land Company in Batavia. Ellicott realized that a canal would add immense value to the land he was selling in the western part of the state. Ellicott later became the first canal commissioner.
The Mohawk River, a tributary to the Hudson, runs in a glacial meltwater channel across the northern reaches of the Appalachians, separating them in New York State into the Catskills and Adirondacks. The Mohawk Valley was the only cut across the Appalachians north of Alabama, and led almost directly from the Hudson River on the east to either Lake Ontario or Lake Erie on the west. From there much of the interior and many settlements would be accessible on the lakes.
The problem was that the land rises about from the Hudson to Lake Erie. Locks at the time could handle up to , so at least 50 locks would be required along the canal. Any such canal would cost a fortune even today, but in 1800 was barely imaginable. President Jefferson, called it "a little short of madness" and rejected it. Nevertheless Hawley managed to interest New York governor DeWitt Clinton. There was much opposition, and the project was scorned as "Clinton's Folly," or "Clinton's Ditch." But in 1817, Clinton got the legislature to appropriate $7,000,000 for construction.
The original Canal was long, from Albany on the Hudson to Buffalo, on Lake Erie. The channel was a cut wide and deep, with removed soil piled on the downhill side to form a walkway. Canal boats, up to in draft, were pulled by horses and mules on a walkway called the towpath. There was only one towpath,generally on the north side of the ditch. When canal boats met the boat with right of way steered to the towpath side of the canal. The other boat steered toward the birm or heelpath side of the canal. The driver or 'hoggee' (pronounced HO-gee) of the privileged boat brought his team to the canalside edge of the towpath while the hoggee of the other boat moved to the outside of the towpath and stopped his team. His towline would go slack, fall into the water and sink to the bottom while his boat continued on by momentum. The privileged boat's team would step over the other boat's towline, and then their boat would pass over the sunken towline without stopping. Once clear the other boat's team would continue on its way.
Construction began July 4, 1817, at Rome, New York. The first section, from Rome to Utica, opened in 1819. At that rate the canal would not be finished for 30 years. The main problems were felling trees to clear a path through virgin forest, and moving excavated soil, both of which took longer than expected. But the builders solved these problems. To fell a tree, they threw rope over the top branches and winched it down. They pulled out the stumps with an innovative stump puller. A pair of huge wheels were set loose on an axle. A large wheel, barely smaller than the others was fixed to the center of the axle. A chain was wrapped around the axle and hooked to the stump. A rope was wrapped around the center wheel and hooked to a team of oxen. The mechanical advantage obtained ripped the stumps out of the soil. Soil to be moved was shoveled into large wheelbarrows that were dumped into mule-pulled carts.
A three-man team with mules could now build a mile in a year, meaning that the problem now was finding enough labor.
The men who planned and oversaw construction were novices, both as surveyors and as engineers. There were no civil engineers in the United States. James Geddes and Benjamin Wright,