On July 4, 1817, workers break ground on the Erie Canal at Rome, New York. The canal, completed in 1825, links the eastern seaboard with the Midwest and transforms New York into a major economic and cultural hub.
The earliest proposals for the Erie Canal came from a destitute flour merchant named Jesse Hawley. In 1806, he wrote a series of essays proposing a great east-west canal, which would create a reliable route for trading between the east coast and the interior of the country. He wrote from an unusual place: debtor’s prison, where he was incarcerated for debts incurred in his trading business. He published his essays in a local newspaper, the Genessee Messenger, and signed them “Hercules.”
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Thomas S. Allen is credited with the song, “Low Bridge, Everybody Down”, which was written after the construction of the New York State Barge Canal, though the name “Erie Canal” features prominently in the lyrics. You can hear the song performed here by Bounding Main as “Low Bridge”.