On Monday, October 26, it will be 201 years since a small packet boat called the Seneca Chief pushed off from Buffalo, New York. On board was Governor DeWitt Clinton, along with two wooden barrels filled with water from Lake Erie. The boat was headed east across the state, all the way to New York City, on a waterway that many people had said could never be built.
That waterway was the Erie Canal, and its story is about ordinary people who kept digging long after the doubters had spoken.
A Dream Called “Madness”
In the early 1800s, moving goods west meant slow, costly trips by wagon. Clinton believed a canal could join the Hudson to Lake Erie and open the whole interior of the young country.
Not everyone agreed. According to History.com, when the idea reached President Thomas Jefferson in 1809, he dismissed it as “little short of madness” and refused to give federal money. The Library of Congress notes the project was popularly known as “Clinton’s Folly.”
Clinton did not give up. Britannica records that he promoted a western canal as early as 1811. After he became governor in 1817, he persuaded the state legislature to authorize loans of $7 million. On July 4, 1817, he officiated at the groundbreaking in Rome, New York.
Built by Hand, Learned Along the Way
The challenge was enormous. The finished canal would run 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo, 40 feet wide and four feet deep, according to the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor. Boats would need to be lifted over more than 500 feet of elevation, so the route needed 83 stone locks.
There was no army of trained engineers to call on. History.com describes the leaders as “self-taught local engineers.” Chief engineers Benjamin Wright and James Geddes were lawyers who had learned surveying. Wright’s assistant, Canvass White, traveled to England to study locks, and he later helped find local limestone that could make an affordable cement that hardened underwater.
The digging was done mostly with axes, picks, shovels and animal power. Many of the first workers were local farmers. Later, Irish immigrants joined the crews, especially in the swampy western sections. The Heritage Corridor says the laborers worked for eight years in hard conditions, and that most of them were U.S.-born.
When problems came, the workers invented their way through them. Nathan Roberts designed a stump puller with 16-foot wheels, drawn by oxen. History.com reports it could pull 40 stumps a day, compared with about four by ordinary labor. At Lockport, Roberts designed a “staircase” of five locks to carry boats up a steep ridge. The Heritage Corridor says the project “became the nation’s first practical school of civil engineering.”
The Marriage of the Waters
Then came October 26, 1825. Britannica notes the canal was finished two years ahead of schedule. The Seneca Chief began its trip from Buffalo, and eight days later Clinton poured the Lake Erie water into the Atlantic Ocean. He called it the “marriage of the waters.”
The results surprised even the hopeful. The Heritage Corridor reports that shipping costs fell by 90 percent compared with hauling goods by ox wagon. Passengers could travel from Albany to Buffalo in about five days, less than half the time of a stagecoach. The Library of Congress explains that the canal sped up settlement in western New York, Ohio, Indiana and the upper Midwest, giving rise to hundreds of new towns. Britannica says it “propelled New York City into a major commercial centre.”
The project once called a folly earned a new nickname: the “Mother of Cities.”
What the Big Ditch Teaches Us Today
Most of us will never dig a canal. But we all face things others call impossible: rebuilding after a loss, healing a family, or getting through a hard season.
- Doubters do not get the final word. A president called it madness. It was finished early.
- You can learn as you go. The canal’s builders were not experts when they started. They became experts by doing the work.
- Big things are built one shovelful at a time. Eight years of steady, ordinary effort changed a nation.
- Nothing great is built alone. Farmers, immigrants, surveyors and leaders each did their part.
Long before the Erie Canal, another group of builders faced mockery while they worked. When Nehemiah and the people of Jerusalem rebuilt their city wall, enemies laughed at them. Yet the work went on, because hearts were united.
“So built we the wall; and all the wall was joined together unto the half thereof: for the people had a mind to work.”
(Nehemiah 4:6, KJV)
Whatever “big ditch” stands in front of you this week, you do not have to finish it today. Pick up the next shovel. Lean on the people God has placed beside you. Trust Him with the miles you cannot yet see. Through every storm, we rise together.
What “impossible” project in your life or family are you working on one step at a time? Share in the comments below.
Sources: Library of Congress, “Today in History: October 26, The Erie Canal”; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Erie Canal”; Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor, “History and Culture”; Dave Roos, History.com, “How the Erie Canal Was Built With Raw Labor and Amateur Engineering” (April 7, 2021; updated May 27, 2025); King James Bible, “Nehemiah 4:6”.
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