Opening of the Erie Canal (1825)

Hello there. My name is DeWitt Clinton, and a long time ago, I was the governor of New York. Back in my day, traveling was very slow and bumpy. Imagine trying to move a big box of toys across the state in a wagon pulled by horses. You would go up and down hills, through thick mud, and over rocky paths. It took a very long time and was very difficult. I had a big dream. I looked at a map and saw the Great Lakes on one side of New York and the big Atlantic Ocean on the other. What if, I thought, we could connect them. What if we built our own river, a man-made waterway called a canal. This watery road would be smooth and straight, and boats could carry people and goods much faster than wagons. Many people thought my idea was silly. They laughed and called it “Clinton’s Ditch.” They said it was too long and too expensive, and that it could never be done. But I believed in my dream, and I knew it could change our country for the better.

We began the hard work on a very special day, July 4th, 1817. Thousands of workers came from all over to help build my dream. They didn’t have big machines like we do today. They used shovels, pickaxes, and wheelbarrows. They worked day after day, digging through thick forests, mucky swamps, and even solid rock. It was a huge job. Our canal needed to be 363 miles long. That’s like lining up more than six thousand big school buses end to end. One of the trickiest parts was figuring out how to get the boats over hills. You can’t make a boat go uphill, can you. So, we built something amazing called locks. A lock is like a water elevator for boats. A boat would float into a big chamber, we would close the giant doors, and then either let water in to lift the boat up or let water out to lower it down. It was a brilliant invention. For eight long years, the men worked, digging and building, proving that even a silly idea could become something real and wonderful.

Finally, after all that digging and building, the big day arrived. On October 26th, 1825, the Erie Canal was officially open. To celebrate, I took a trip on a special boat named the Seneca Chief. We started in a city called Buffalo, on Lake Erie, and traveled all the way to New York City. All along the canal, people gathered to cheer for us. To spread the news that we were coming, cannons were fired one after another along the entire route. When we finally reached the Atlantic Ocean, I performed a special ceremony. I poured two barrels of fresh water from Lake Erie into the salty water of the ocean. We called this the “Wedding of the Waters” because we had finally joined them together. My dream, the one everyone called “Clinton’s Ditch,” was now a water highway. It helped people move west, it made New York City a busy and important place, and it showed everyone that with a big idea and a lot of hard work, you can connect people and change the world.