- So welcome to another program with the Monroe County History Club. It's a beautiful day outside, but we'll be in here for a while. My name is Michael Carter. Welcome to my wife Paulette, my brother Steve, and my cousins over there. They're nice enough to come to most of the programs. I left some sheets of paper on all the tables. Not one for each person, but one for each table. So share amongst yourself or something. It's on our upcoming programs, and we've got them scheduled all the way into next year.
- And also keep in mind these programs aren't set in stone. People do have problems sometime and have to cancel. We've had a couple of cancellations earlier in the year, but we work around them. Things always work out. Many thanks to the American Legion for allowing us to have these programs. We've been partners in presenting local history for 12 years now, at least 12 years. Thanks so much to the wait staff who do such a great job each time. And as I told you, they're a little bit short today.
- It's Amy and Amanda and some other people helping her probably. Please be generous with them. I'd also like to thank CATS TV for recording our programs for about nine years now. And I'd like to recognize a fellow who has been recording these presentations the last few years, maybe five or so, Dave Walter. He's good. This is a very important service as it allows us to upload each program to YouTube.
- people who can't make it to the live programs. In addition, it allows us to preserve our local history for future generations to enjoy. Also, thanks to our local history enthusiasts to attend these live programs. That's just great. We really appreciate your support over the years. Also, those people who watch our programs on YouTube, much appreciated. There's well over 100 now. It's hard to believe. Well over 100 programs on YouTube. Thanks to CATS-TV recording them.
- It's great that these transplanted Bloomingtonians all over the country can see them. The ones we present are really diverse with a lot of different subjects. Each subject is different from one month to the next, and that's what makes it kind of interesting. How many new attendees today? Do we have some new ones? I'll bet we do. Not everybody's on Facebook, so if you want to leave your email address with me for our direct mailing list, feel free to write it down and give it to me, and I'll give it to our buddy George Carpenter
- to put in the new email list. Right now, Daniel Schlegel, the Director of Monroe County History Center, would like to say a few words. Thank you, Michael. I just wanted to bring a few reminders real quick for everybody. We have our garage sale coming up, so it's at the same place that it's been for years for now. So I have those quarter sheets, so if you do any
- late late spring cleaning or early fall spring cleaning depending on how you look at it. Donations are still being accepted. November
- 7th and 8th of Friday and Saturday will be when we have our November garage sale this year. And then we have several different exhibits that are up right now at the History Center from Hey Neighbor, about the historic neighborhoods in downtown Bloomington, to Bloomington's Ordinance 7567, in which we have a panel about that on Thursday night and two nights for free at the History Center. So you can come and hear a lot more about history there as well. And so the only other thing is I brought a number of books
- over here to my left. I try to bring a wide variety in KE. I swear I just saw David Nord here. One of his new publications is over there as well, so you might want to check that out. And David, it's about rails, trails, and a canal. Your new publication? Okay, about Spring Mill Village.
- rivers, roads, and rails. I was in the right ballpark. So I have that over there. And then by sheer coincidence, I did not check who the speaker was today, I will admit. But the gentleman to my right here just happens to be author of one of the books we have over there. So it's the last copy of the book. So if you want to buy that book, I'm sure we could find that author and have him autograph it for free. So you will get a great deal on that book.
- that he knows a thing or two about, if I'm not mistaken. So please come over and visit us and see that. Or if you need garage sale reminders for donations or when the actual garage sale will occur, please stop by and see me. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Daniel. Yeah, I'm not going to go through all those upcoming programs, but there's some dandies. Even next month, we'll probably see a crowd as big as this one.
- Larry DeMoss will give a program called Quarry Lads, Eagles, and Mustangs, the evolution of Richmond-Bean Boston schools. Then a month after that, Rod Spaw is going to give a program showing all kinds of photos from the 1975-76 undefeated IU basketball season. There's never been another undefeated team, and maybe there won't be, so that should be interesting. Anyway, lots of interesting stuff down the road here.
- And that brings us to today, and John Butler goes by Jake a lot. And this is his fifth program here. His first one was probably about 10 years ago, close to it. And every one of them has been
- Just wonderful, just great programs. I'll just read the little blurb he gave us. It's called From Towpaths to Trains, History of the Indiana Canal Era in the early 1800s. The canal seemed to be the future of transportation. Indiana embraced this boom wholeheartedly, ultimately completing the second longest canal ever constructed in the history of the world. Unfortunately, the boom was short-lived, and this building spree would bankrupt the state and ruin investors.
- This fully illustrated talk will cover the rise and fall of Indiana's planned canal system, focusing on the logic behind it, the construction of the canals, and the failure of the system and rise of the railroads. So Jake, I'll let you have it. Thank you very much. I'm going to stand over here by my slides because they're the heart of the presentation, so hopefully
- You guys can see them all. This is Topaz to Trains, A History of Indiana's Canal Era. I'm Dr. John Butler. I have a PhD in US history. I graduated from IU. And I specialize in transportation and landscapes. So that's me. This is A History of Indiana's Canal Era. First thing I'm going to talk about are roads west.
- And the original 13 colonies, they're maritime colonies. They are separated from the mother country England by the Atlantic Ocean, but they're also connected by the Atlantic Ocean. All of the major cities in the United States at that time are port cities. So it makes sense, right? Maritime colonies. All of the trade that's coming over from England is being brought
- across the ocean, maritime trade. And all the trade going back to England is going across the ocean, maritime trade. And then all the trade between the colonies. That's all being done on the ocean too. So there's very little incentive to build roads. And the few roads that are being built are being built from the interior to the port city, and that's where they're gonna take the raw materials to the port, and then they're gonna go out from there. There really are no roads in between the colonies.
- There's no reason to build them. Now, after the American Revolution, things are different. Now the United States is going to have to knit itself together. And it's not going to be just a maritime knitting. It's going to have to build some roads. Unfortunately, there is a series of mountains that runs the length of the country and cuts off the east from the west.
- And getting over, around, under, through these mountains is going to be really the story of transportation history in the eastern United States. So in New York, the mountains are called the Adirondacks. In Virginia, they're called the Blue Ridge. In Tennessee, they're called the Smoky Mountains. They're all the same mountains, and they present a formidable obstacle. And now you can see it better, right?
- So there's the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. Now it really needs to, the federal government really needs to get this land settled because they have a lot of debts from the American Revolution and they're going to pay off these debts by selling land to Americans. And the part that they want to settle next is the Northwest Territory.
- But it's cut off from the rest of the eastern seaboard by those pesky mountains. Now, there's really two ways to get to the Northwest Territory. You can either go through the Great Lakes, which makes the border at the top there. You can see Michigan's surrounded by lakes. Or you could go on the Ohio River. And those are really the two ways to get into the Northwest Territory. Now, getting over these mountains, there's a couple different routes. So I'm going to talk about one that starts at the Chesapeake Bay first.
- So there's the Chesapeake Bay, there's Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia. So the first route headed out from Washington, D.C., and it went up the Potomac River. The Potomac River wasn't much for sailing. It's rocky, it's shallow, but there was a flat route that you could take, walk beside the river, and you could get through a lot of the mountains. See that yellow arrow, those green folds there? Those are all the mountains.
- And you can see the Potomac River gets you through about half of them. And then it makes an obnoxious turn to the south. And they didn't want to go south. They wanted to go north and west. And so from Fort Cumberland, that was where the river made the turn, they wanted to go to the forks of the Ohio or the Ohio River. Native Americans had a trail that went over the mountains, and then it split.
- heard, hold on, but I'm not stopping. So one trail went to the Ohio River and the other trail went to the forks of the Ohio. Now, these trails would be great for westward expansion. So what happens? Well, in 1749, Namaquilin blazes a trail. I'm sorry that's so tiny up there. And Namaquilin is a Native American and what he does is he just takes a
- hatchet and he marks on the trees along the way so that people can follow the trail who aren't in the know. He's paid to do it. Then in 1754, young George Washington heads out towards Fort Necessity and this time he's bringing a cannon with him and so he has to improve that trail a little bit to get the cannon to Fort Necessity.
- He actually gets a little bit farther than that. He winds up getting ambushed and driven back. He winds up surrendering on July 4th to the French at Fort Necessity, which he writes in his diary, will always be the worst day of my life. Then in 1755, Braddock, British general, also
- tries to go to the forks of the Ohio. And he takes this same road. And now he's bringing a wagon train. And he's bringing siege artillery. And so he's got to improve the road again. So each time, they go first a guy blazes the trail. Then Washington makes it better. You can get a cannon over it. Braddock makes it better. You can take wagons over it. They're slowly improving this road. Braddock winds up getting massacred, not so good for him.
- But what happens is this route becomes the nation's first federal road. And so in 1806, the National Road is authorized and it's gonna go from Baltimore, there's a branch to Washington, to Wheeling, and then there's also a branch to Pittsburgh. And that essentially follows that same route. That National Road is also called the Cumberland Road because it leaves from Fort Cumberland.
- And by the early 1800s, you could get wagons over the National Road. So that's one route west. The federal government keeps building and improving the road. This is a bridge over the Castleman River. Notice how fabulously tall that bridge is. It's built to go over the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which never gets there. So there's another way to get to the Northwest Territory.
- that'll get you to the Ohio River. And that leaves from sort of the back bottom corner of Virginia. There's a spot where Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee all come together. And right there is where the Wilderness Road left to go over the mountains. Now the Wilderness Road goes through the Cumberland Gap. This is the first confusing thing. Fort Cumberland and the Cumberland Road don't go through the Cumberland Gap.
- This is what happens when you name everything after English people who aren't even here. So anyway, the wilderness road is blazed by Daniel Boone in 1775 and it goes from the back country of Virginia over the mountains into Kentucky. He makes the road go to Boonesboro, surprise, surprise, but you can also connect to Logan's Trace to the Buffalo Trace and get to the Ohio River. So that's the other route.
- Here's Daniel Boone. The artist had to keep moving in front of him as he was walking to paint this picture. Actually, this is painted in 1851. We're like almost 100 years after Daniel Boone, but this is the mythologizing era of Daniel Boone. But there he is, blazing the trail over the Cumberland Gap. This is what it probably was more like.
- It was a packhorse road. You could walk, you could take a packhorse. It was a rough route, up and down the mountains. Now eventually by 1796 you could get a wagon over it, but you'll notice in this picture that this wagon is double teamed. So it's taken four horses.
- to pull the wagon over where normally it would just take two. If you didn't have four horses, you'd have to wait at the bottom of a hill till the next wagon came along and then you could cajole them into double teaming and you could get your wagon up and then you could go back and get their wagon. It was a slow and tough road. So there's our blue route. That's the Cumberland Road, the National Road. And then there's the red route going through the Cumberland Gap. There was one other way.
- And that's through New York. And this next section, I'm going to talk about Clinton's Ditch. That's what they derogatively called the Erie Canal while it was being constructed. And it was constructed from 1817 to 1825. Now, you see New York up there. It's nice and green. It's at the top of the map. You could go up the Hudson River, and then you could go down another valley, and you could get to Lake Erie.
- It's kind of out of the way. And to make people take this route, it's gonna have to have some advantage. So there's showing you the route. And notice the mountains are in brown and the nice green river valleys cut through them. So the Hudson River Valley to the Mohawk Valley to Lake Erie, the water level route. But it's hundreds of miles farther and you're doing it on foot or with a wagon. And so that's not that desirable.
- But DeWitt Clinton, the governor of New York, from 1817 to 1822, and then again from 1825 to 1828, thought otherwise. He thought, what if there was something we could do to improve this route? And what was that idea? Well, it was old. It was actually over 200 years old. This is the world's first modern canal, which was begun in France in 1604. They were ancient canals.
- But this was modern. It had modern technology. You know, new sluice skates and fancier locks. And so Clinton looks at this 200-year-old idea, and he says, why can't we do this in New York? I mean, we could dig a canal, right? The advantage of the canal is not speed. Everything's still going to be going at a mule's pace. The advantage of the canal is what it can haul. A pack mule can hold about 250 pounds. Put that same mule
- on a canal, and it can haul 60,000 pounds. That number seems unbelievable. I redid the math. I checked it with other sources. It's actually on the low side. Just look at this picture, for example. We have a mule. This guy over here, he's not doing anything to help. The mule's pulling everything on his own. We have a double-decker boat full of tourists. I mean, imagine what that thing must weigh.
- The rope alone that's connecting the mule to the boat probably weighs 20 pounds. So now you've got a magnifier, right? That one mule on the Wilderness Road, 250 pounds, same mule on the Erie Canal, now it could pull 60,000 pounds. So that's gonna be the winning formula. So they decide to build it. And it's gonna go from Troy on the Hudson River, whoops, go back one, all the way
- down the Mohawk Valley to Buffalo on Lake Erie. So it's a really ambitious plan, and it's gonna take some money and some digging to do, but it's a pretty good idea. It's gonna be 363 miles long, and they're gonna gain over 600 feet of elevation. And that's tough to do on a canal. Every time you gain elevation, you gotta go through a lock. So you can see the low point is Albany, and then the high point is Buffalo.
- begun in 1817. It's finished October 1825. This is a picture of a very serious Governor Clinton mingling the waters of Lake Erie into the Atlantic at the symbolic opening of the canal. The canal changes New York. Not only does it revolutionize transportation, you can go
- into upstate New York easily and from upstate New York you can go to downstate New York easily. People can travel more quickly. But really what it changes is how they haul things. And what it does is it connects the hinterland, the farming regions of New York State with New York City. And so everybody benefits. The farmers benefit because they can sell their crops.
- Everybody has crops in upstate New York, but they need them in the city so you can sell them for more. The city benefits because they can get crops cheaper. The goods from the city can go on the canal. And it's a win-win situation for pretty much everybody in New York. This is a graph of New York City's population. This is the trajectory it's on before the canal, the red line. This is the trajectory it's on after the canal, the blue line.
- New York City grows phenomenally. It goes from being sort of the third biggest port in the United States to the largest port in the United States. Philadelphia and Boston were the colonial ports. After the Erie Canal, New York City is the biggest port. New York makes a ton of money on the canal. In one year, the tolls for the canal pay for all the costs of building the canal. One year.
- Within 10 years, they've paid for every public improvement that the state of New York has ever done. It's a phenomenal success. They are printing money. And the canal keeps getting improved. They make it wider. They add more locks. Notice there's two locks here in Rexford, New York. The canal still exists to this day, although the original canal is almost completely destroyed. It's been widened and widened and widened again.
- So it was a phenomenal success for New York City. And people around the country are looking at that success and they're thinking, huh, I wonder if we could do something similar. I mean, we'd like to make money. So this brings us to the idea of the Wabash and Erie Canal. If you look at a map of the United States and a map of the rivers, you can see that there's a couple places where you could connect Lake Erie with the Ohio River system.
- So here's the Erie Canal going across. So that's the way in. And Clinton said that. He's like, I've opened the way in. Now we need somebody to open the way out of Lake Erie. So there's a couple options. Maybe the best was right across northern Indiana. And that would connect the Wabash River system to Lake Erie. There are other possible routes. Ohio had a bunch. All of these routes are going to be turned into canals.
- But the one that had the best shot, the one that was the straightest line is that orange line. Now this is a map that shows navigable rivers. So actually these rivers go farther. This is just where a steamboat could go. And so the Wabash River is navigable up to the tip of the canoe according to this map. But it actually went a lot farther. This is a hydrogeological map of Indiana showing the river systems.
- And if you kind of zoom in there, you can see where the Wabash and the Maumee are separated by a continental divide. That's that yellow line. People talk about the continental divide. There's tons of them. Water drains one way, water drains the other. So on the right side of that line, water is gonna drain into Lake Erie. On the left side of that line, it's either gonna drain into Lake Michigan or the Gulf of Mexico. So that's the break point right there in Indiana.
- And inside that circle is how close those river systems come to touching. And that spot is really kind of a magical spot because that's an easy spot to travel and trade through. And the Native Americans knew about this. This is a map of the Miami Indians' home territory. You can see it's sort of bounded on the west by the Mississippi River, on the south by the Ohio River. Then there's Lake Michigan up above.
- But the center of their empire was right there. It was right where those two river systems came so close together. And here we see there's the Maumee River system, and there's the Wabash River system. The names are similar. There's the Walasiki, Sapili means river, the Kitikwana, which is the tip of canoe, the Maumeewa, which is the Maumee,
- And the Miami put their capital city, Kikianga, at this crossroads because this was the most powerful spot in their empire and because they could charge tolls for everybody who wanted to come buy their capital. And they made a ton of money. That's why they put their capital there. So they called it Kikianga, which meant the great gate. The French called it Marais de Piège, which meant toll road swamp.
- So it depends on how you look at it. So where those river systems almost come together was the seat of power. And so here we have an old map showing that. So there's the Maumee River. There's Kikianga. So they're right by the banks of the Maumee. The portage, which would get you between the two river systems, is running off the left of our slide there.
- The French built a fort here in 1706. They want to control this when they take over the territory. The British built a fort here in 1760. It's destroyed in Pontiac's rebellion in 1763, but they also wanted to control this crossroads. And finally, the Americans built Fort Wayne in 1796 because they want to control this crossroads. So every power, as they take this over, builds a fort here because this is so important.
- There's the town of Fort Wayne platted in 1823. And the guy standing next to the map is a nerd, just so you know. Fort Wayne, this is Fort Wayne in 1816, is a tiny isolated military outpost. And the soldiers don't have a ton of stuff to do. But one of the things they do is they scout around. And they determine that you could probably build a canal along the portage.
- You know, why carry your boats? What if we dig a ditch and then we could just float the whole way? That would be great. So the rumor goes back to Washington. Washington DC does a formal report. They send out surveyors, and they're like, yes, the soldiers were right. You probably could do a canal. Word of that filters to the people in Fort Wayne, all 100 of them, and they get excited.
- and they start agitating to get this canal built. The problem is, Indiana in 1816 has just become a state. It's the 19th state. Fort Wayne is way up in the northern portion of the state that is not organized, that is still mostly Indian territory, and there's nobody up there to use a canal.
- So the state's, eh. The other problem is everybody lives in the southern part of the state. Why would people living in the southern part of the state want to build a canal way up there in the northern part of the state? What good would that do them? And there's really not that many people. There's only 63,000 people in all of Indiana. Bloomington right now is bigger than Indiana was at statehood. And there's the capital.
- south that red arrow. So you can see asking to build a canal way up north is probably not going to happen. But the idea kicks around. And in 1823, Indiana Governor Hendricks recommends building a Wabash and Maumee Canal. That's a fun looking guy there. If you look at politician portraits from, you know, Virginia and Pennsylvania, places out east, they're looking really sharp.
- Indiana is more of the frontier portraiture at this stage. Anyway, the idea is sort of simple. We're going to make a portage right on that red line, and that's going to connect the Little River, which connects the Wabash River, to the Maumee River. It's going to be about 25 miles long. That'd be a long way for me and you today, like that's from halfway from here to Martinsville, or almost to Bedford.
- In the scheme of canals, 25 miles isn't that bad. So that's the first idea. Now by 1824, when this idea is being kicked around, Indiana has a few more people, but the problem's still the same. Most everybody lives down by the Ohio River. The canal's still way up on the northern end of the state. So if you don't have enough money in your little state, what do you do? You appeal to the federal government. So this is the capital in 1824. They're doing way better than Indiana.
- And so Indiana asked the federal government, hey, would you guys be interested in a canal? The federal government says, yeah. And Indiana says, so you want to pay for it? And the federal government says, no. So they kind of go back and forth a little bit. And in May 26, 1824, the federal government grants Indiana land for the route of the canal.
- We'll give you all the land you need for the canal. That's easy for them to give. They have lots of land. And they're going to give 90 feet on each side of the canal. And so, you know, for 25 miles, that's a sizable chunk of land. But the canal is going to be a little bit, they want it to be a little bit longer than that. Now, they want the canal to be started in three years, 1827. They want it to be finished in 12, 1836. This doesn't happen.
- This is Indianapolis Washington Street in 1825. This is the arrival of the state archives by ox cart to the new capital city. The National Road
- is projected to go through Indianapolis and it will eventually go down Washington Street. They cut off the stumps at 18 inches so that your wagon wouldn't hit them as you went down the road. And they very nicely rounded off the tops. So when your wagon did hit them, it wasn't as bad. So this is the center of downtown Indianapolis. This is that same spot today.
- A little bit of difference. Monument Circle is built on the oval that was reserved for the governor's mansion. The governor didn't wind up living there. The state capitol is just down Washington Street. Meridian is the north-south street. So, Indiana in 1825 wasn't really ready to build a canal. So, they tell the federal government that. We're not gonna get that done.
- So the federal government says, fine, we'll give you a better deal. Forget 90 feet. We'll give you a much better deal. So on March 2nd, 1827, the federal government grants Indiana alternating sections, five sections deep on both sides of the canal. And now the canal is going to not be 25 miles. Now it's going to go all the way to the mouth of the Tippecone River and the Oglase River in Ohio. So this is a lot of land they're given now.
- This is going to amount to 527,271 acres, and this is the first of three land grants that Indiana will receive to try to build this canal. But there are strings attached, right? We're giving you this free stuff, but you're going to have to do it on our schedule. The canal is to be started in five years, March 1832, and completed in 20, 1857. That might be doable. Maybe Indiana can get it together.
- So here's the alternating sections. What they did is they kept one section for the federal government and then they gave one section to the state. This is the map of Ohio. They did the same thing in Indiana. The blue sections, that's the canal land. The state can sell that off. The white sections, those are the ones the federal government kept. And so they alternated. So it makes kind of a checkerboard pattern, but what it did was it reserved some of the best land for both.
- The federal government got some canal land, the states got canal land. But the key is the states get the land for free and they can sell off this land to help pay for the canal. So now, original plan 25 miles, new plan 160 miles. So that's asking a lot more.
- 1827, Indiana's growing northward but it still has the same problem. Most of the people live in the south. This canal's gonna be built in the north. Why should we build a canal for people up north? I'm never gonna use it. I live in the south. I don't wanna pay for it. And getting this, overcoming this problem in the legislature is gonna be the thing. Getting the state to agree to pay for this canal because everybody lives down south and the canal's up north. So they got five years to do it.
- They finally passed the bill in January of 1832, three months before the deadline. So that's Indiana, right? Just skin of our teeth, we got it done. This is the first Indiana State House in Indianapolis. There was already one before that wasn't in Indianapolis. And this becomes the Marion County Courthouse, and then eventually it gets torn down.
- So in Fort Wayne on February 22nd, 1832, ground was broken for the canal. Remember, that was the deal. They had to get the canal started. So they got the legislation passed in January. They're breaking ground in February. Normally you do breaking ground in July, and you do it on July 4th, because that's the day you start great projects. They can't wait that long. So they're like, Washington's birthday. He would have been 100 today. So that's why we're doing it.
- It was really just so that they fulfilled the requirements. So they break ground in Fort Wayne, and you know, some guys in top outs come out and dig a little canal, and then that's it for a bit. So how is Indiana going to build this canal? Matter of fact, how are they going to pay for it? Well, Indiana's not going to have to pay for it. Funding's going to be provided by land sales and tolls. And if you believe that, I've got a bridge I want to sell you too.
- You know, the state's gonna have to put in some seed money, right? Tolls won't show up right away. So the state's gonna have to pay something. So they think, well, we'll borrow up to $200,000, which was a lot back then, for the canal. That should get us going, and then after that, we'll be set. So back to the state house. Land sales are slow. It's up in the middle of nowhere. The canal's not finished yet. People aren't buying the land. That's not good. So they don't get much money.
- The labor costs alone are going to expend all of the canal funds in one year. That's going to cost a lot more than they thought. So in 1833, they're going to run out of money. They've got five miles of canal, quote unquote, finished. But those have no water. Three miles are almost ready. And then they have 32 miles under contract. Things aren't going well already.
- Why doesn't the canal have any water? Well, they started at Fort Wayne. Fort Wayne is the top of the canal, right? That's why they had the portage there, was because it was the high ground. The water flowed either direction. So they literally start at the high ground. And then how do you get water to the top of your canal? Canals flow. They're not like a lake where water's just stored. You actually constantly have to add water in the top, and it's constantly flowing out the bottom.
- they had to get water to their canal in Fort Wayne. There's Fort Wayne. So how did they do that? Well, there's in blue, that's the Wabash and Erie Canal that they're busily digging by Fort Wayne, and it's gonna cover that portage. But they're gonna need water from above that. So they dig a canal feeder, another canal to feed their canal. And that's gonna connect up to the St. Joseph River.
- And there they put a dam, and then they'll capture water from the St. Joseph River and use that to fill up the Wabashonary Canal. So at the very beginning, they have to build more than they'd expected. So there's the feeder dam in the St. Joseph River. I have no idea what's going on with that canal boat in this picture, like why they're hanging out right by the dam. No, hold the boat right before disaster. I think they're supposed to be waiting for the other boat to pass, but you would do that
- further upstream, you wouldn't do that right above the dam. I didn't paint the picture. It's his governor, Noah Noble, and if any one person is responsible for the Indiana Canal system, it's Noah Noble, he never met an improvement, an internal improvement that he didn't like. Any idea, he was like, oh, that's a great idea, let's build it. So 1833, they're already running out of money, and 1834,
- They borrow some more money. Remember, they're only supposed to ever have to spend $200,000. They're already $500,000 in. They borrow $100,000 from Eastern banks and $400,000 from the state bank, which is convenient, right? No, no, we'll just take that money. The canal's still not close to completion. They now have 50 miles done by the next year.
- And it's becoming evident that the state needs a plan, a comprehensive plan that's going to govern how they build this canal in the future. And to get that plan, they're going to have to go back to the legislature, and they're going to have to overcome that obstacle of southern people paying for northern improvements. In the meantime, this is like 10 years after the Erie Canal has been done, and the world's been moving on. Indiana actually has a choice.
- They don't have to build a canal. They could build a railroad. And there's a race going on. And Indiana's been watching this race just like everybody else. And this is the race between the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The largest cities in the U.S. in 1820 that aren't New York all take notice. When New York finishes that canal in 1825, those other cities are like, uh-oh, we need to do something.
- New York's killing us. We don't want to be second place. So every one of those other cities is going to come up with their own plan. They're going to imitate New York. They're going to connect to the interior of their own way. Except for New Orleans, which already has an awesome route that nature provided. So let's look at some of these plans. In 1825, the citizens of Washington DC announced that they are going to dig a canal along the Potomac River
- all the way to the forks of the Ohio across the mountains. That's ambitious. And so it's going to follow that sort of the route of that early road and get to Pittsburgh. So they announced that in 1825. In 1826, Philadelphia is not to be outdone. And they also announced a plan. They're going to use a mixture of canals and railroads and in-kind planes to make a transportation system from Philadelphia
- to Pittsburgh, also across the mountains. Not to be outdone, Baltimore in 1827 announces their plan, except they're gonna be different. They're gonna build a railroad, and they're gonna go to the Ohio River. So all these plans have been announced, but they don't all get started at the same time. 1826, New Jersey announces their plan, or Philadelphia, 1826,
- Philadelphia starts their plan. So they're actually the first to get going. In 1828, Baltimore is going to get going. And in 1828, Washington, DC is going to get going. Matter of fact, they're going to get going on the same day. And this is why it kind of becomes a race. Because they're basically going to the same place. And they're starting on the same day with two different forms of transportation.
- So July 4th, 1828, President John Quincy Adams digs the first spade full of dirt for the C&O Canal. Pretty good. They got the president. Baltimore, Ohio also starts on July 4th. The president's busy that day. But they get Charles, or Charles Carroll, who's the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence, to attend their ceremony. He's too old to actually lay the stone, but he attends the ceremony. And here they are laying the first stone of the Baltimore, Ohio Railroad.
- Now, who's going to win? They're both big undertakings. You look at this picture, you see, oh, what a quaint picture. Look at the geese. So peaceful. I see a lot of work. That canal didn't dig itself. It's four feet deep. It's over 20 feet wide. That's dug by hand. Right in front of that boat, there's a set of locks. Those locks are built by hand, cut stone.
- Beside the locks there's a tavern, a lock keeper's house, that stuff all has to be built, the tow path has to be built. There's an immense amount of work in a canal and it's all going to be done with, you know, basically picks and shovels and hand labor. So it's not going to be easy. There's all sorts of structures that have to be built for a canal. I'm stealing this map from the National Park Service, their numbers don't serve me
- particularly well, but we'll use it anyway. Three and four, you see locks and lockkeepers' houses. You have to build that. Any time a canal goes up or down elevation, you have to have a lock. And because people can't be trusted to close the canal behind them, you have to have a lockkeeper to make sure that that happens. You'll notice in between one and two, there's a lock going out onto the river.
- Depending on the canal, they had places where they could go out onto the river or not. Also, you had to bring in water from the river. You're constantly bringing water into the canal, and you're constantly dumping water out of the canal. So you have to have ways for creeks to get under the canal, see up there by one. That's an aqueduct. So that's a bridge carrying water over water. You had to build those. Just above one, you see there's even a tunnel. On rare occasions, canals had to go through tunnels.
- Yet more labor. So the whole thing's incredibly labor intensive. You have to mine the rocks that's coming across the bank there of the river. There's the quarry. You have to build a dam on the river to hold the water level for the canal. It's a lot of work. And like I said, all that work's being done. Picks and shovels and mules. This is a picture of them making deep pool.
- on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, they're making it bigger. It's a later picture, but the technology hasn't changed. They're doing all the scraping with mule teams. And the wheelbarrow with basically no wheels on it is what they're using as the scraper. It's not much better for the railroad. They have to invent everything basically out of thin air.
- The locomotives. The first locomotive on the Baltimore, Ohio was so bad that the day after they ran it, they started a competition to replace it. That's not good. This is the type of locomotive that replaced it. It's a reproduction. This was built around 1832. This was the locomotive Atlantic. It's a grasshopper type. It had these rods that went up and down in the front of the locomotive like a grasshopper's legs. Didn't go very fast. Couldn't haul very much.
- But it was better than their first locomotive. This is a picture of the Baltimore, Ohio Centennial in 1927 where they're running a replica train. They're releasing the steam for the whistle. And notice where that steam's going, right into the carriages. So riding behind these early contraptions was not glamorous. And basically, that's like a wagon, right, behind it, two double-decker
- stagecoaches connected to the locomotive. They're making all this up and it's kind of a seat of their pants. How do you even make the rails? How do you connect them? They don't know. So they try three different methods. One method is they lay rails onto granite blocks and the blocks are strung together one after another. Another method in the middle is they put rails on wood ties.
- That one wins out. And then on the side closest to me, they also just tried to put rails on granite blocks, just chunks of block. They tried all three methods. Here's a photograph of one of those granite blocks. You can see that's where the rail would have been strapped to it. There's the holes where they would have connected to the granite. Here's another picture. Imagine building a railroad on granite blocks. How long that would take. You gotta quarry all those blocks, lay all those blocks down.
- They only did maybe 20 miles with this method. This is the Ellicott Depot, one of the first depots in the United States. They built that at Granite, too. I mean, if you want it to last forever, build it out of granite. It was a two-story depot. The trains could go in at the top. So it was kind of like the locomotive house and everything. They didn't know what they were doing. They were making this all up.
- How about the bridges? This is the Thomas Viaduct. This is in 1835. You build that out of granite, too. And look at the tiny little train on the top of that. That bridge is so overbuilt. And it's expensive, and it takes a long time to build out of granite. You've got master masons. So this is 1835. They built it to last 100 years. There it is in 1937, same bridge.
- Here it is in probably the 1990s, guessing the paint schemes, early CSX. Same bridge, still there. They built it to last forever. So we got our two contenders. By 1836, and this is when Indiana is debating, like, what should we do? What should we build? Here's how they've done. The Baltimore and Ohio has made it all the way to Harper's Ferry.
- but they're stopped there, because they can't get a permit, they can't get a charter to build across the river into Virginia. And so they're waiting on Virginia, and Virginia's in no hurry. So they're stuck there. They know where they wanna go, they're gonna head to Martinsburg and then on to the Ohio River, but they can't build, so they're waiting. In the meantime, they build a line from Baltimore to Washington, and that's the line that that big stone bridge is on. So that's what they've gotten done by 1836. Chesapeake and Ohio Canal?
- And when I started this, I was like, I'm going to prove what idiots the people in Indiana were for not choosing the railroad. But Chesapeake and Ohio Canal has actually done pretty well. They've made it all the way up to Williamsport. And if you look at this map, who's winning the race? It's kind of more of a toss-up than I would have thought. But there's some things to consider. Number one, Baltimore and Ohio is getting better at building a railroad.
- They're learning how to do stuff. You don't have to make everything out of granite. So here's the bridge they eventually build at Harpers Ferry when Virginia gives them permission to cross. And notice that the bridge piers are built out of stone, but the bridge is wood. That's going to be faster to build and cheaper to build. And as the railroad gets better at building bridges, the building lines are going to become quicker. They get really good at building this bridge. It gets destroyed three, four times during the Civil War. Here it is again.
- And this diamond iron, quicker, faster to build. So the railroad's getting better. Notice that the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal is right beside the railroad there, almost sharing roadbed. Both coming up that rocky Potomac. See why nobody can sail on the Potomac? Now, at the same time, the Sino Canal has built the best part of their canal. They've built the easy part. These are the cost estimates. They've built the eastern section.
- 185 miles. They haven't finished it yet, but they're working on it. It's going up and down 578 feet, which is impressive. It's going to have 74 locks. Look at that next section though, the middle section. It's only 70 miles long, but it's going to go up and down almost 2,000 feet. It's going to have 246 locks. That's going to be impossible to build. And it was. They never built that section.
- So from these two things, the railroad's getting better at building and the canal is actually going to run into its tough patch. But people in Indiana didn't pay attention to that. And instead, they came up with a bill that was going to fix everything. And this bill was called the Mammoth Internal Improvements Act. And basically what they did was that if we can't get everybody to agree to build this canal in northern Indiana, what if we gave everybody something?
- Everybody's going to get a canal. Now will you vote for it? So here's what they did. Here's a map. This is a modern map of Indiana. We're going to start showing the projects that they add to this bill. And they keep adding projects to this bill until almost the whole state's covered and everybody's happy. So Wabash and Erie Canal is going to go all the way down to Terre Haute. Even longer yet. We couldn't finish it before, but we're going to make it longer. That's kind of the crown jewel.
- We're going to make a central canal that's going to leave the Wabashan area of Peru, go all the way down to Indianapolis, across the middle of the state, and eventually end in Evansville. That would have been a heck of a canal. We're going to have a White River Canal that's going to go up the eastern portion of the state, leaving Lawrenceburg, up towards Connorsville. But that isn't all. We're going to have a crosscut canal that's going to connect the Wabashan area to the central canal.
- Let's keep digging. Let's have a canal from Fort Wayne to Lake Michigan. Let's have a canal extending the White River Canal to Noblesville where then connect to the Central Canal. Let's build some roads. We'll take the Buffalo Trace and we will build it from, we'll make it nicer from Jeffersonville to Vincennes. Let's build the Michigan Road from Madison through Indianapolis all the way up to Michigan.
- Let's build a little road from South Bend to Lake Michigan. Let's build the national road from Richmond across the state through Indianapolis to Terre Haute. Let's build a road from New Albany to Lafayette. And that would have gone through Monroe County. That was our road. That's why the Bloomington guys were like, we're gonna vote for this. Let's build a railroad from Madison to Indianapolis.
- Let's build a railroad from Lawrenceburg to Indianapolis. Are we finally done? Nope. Let's build a railroad from Indianapolis to Lafayette. Look how much of the state they've managed to cover with this. Everybody should be happy. You know, there's a couple places like Marion, I feel sorry for them, Nashville. Nashville never gets good transportation. But the majority of the state is promised a route in this mammoth bill.
- I almost forgot one. Jeffersonville to Madison, another railroad. So the Internal Improvements Act. The state is going to appropriate $10 million. That's a lot of money. And they're going to borrow all of it. They don't have it. I mean, how is she going to get it? Work will commence on all the projects at once. No town wants to be left out. And they don't want to see the other towns get their projects started first. So it's going to start everything all at once.
- Profits from tolls and land sales will pay off the loans, remember? We're not going to have to pay for this. It's all going to be paid for by somebody else. That's good because the interest on the loans at 5% was 10 times larger than the state's revenue from taxation. That's not a good economic basis to start your canal on. But work began all at once, all across the state. This is a goofy slide.
- showing surveyors. This is like the first step of canal building surveyors and clearing the land. Now I hope they weren't clearing the land right by the surveyors like they're doing here. OSHA would not have been happy. But grubbing out the trees, clearing out the land, measuring out the right of way begins on the whole system at once. Now the Wabash and Erie Canal has made it from Fort Wayne down to almost Logan's Port.
- and their next year they're gonna build on down towards Delphi. The big obstacle that they have is the Eel River aqueduct in Logansport. They have to build a big bridge over the Eel River. This delays them some time, but they get that done around 1838. A lot of these dates are tough because it's like when they get the bridge done, when they get water in it, when the first boat crosses it. But here's Logansport.
- There's the canal. They stop. They build the aqueduct. They go on through. The Michigan Road also crosses here. There's the great Michigan Road. They make it to a little place called Lockport by 1838. And Lockport's unusual because there's an aqueduct right by the lock. There's tons of places named Lockport. Every canal has a lockport. This is also, I think, called Burnett's Creek Aqueduct.
- The reason it's significant today is because it's the oldest continuously operating bridge in the state of Indiana. It's no longer a canal bridge and now carries a road over Burnett's Creek. I went there and made a special field trip to go see this thing. I drive hours out of my way and there's a barbed wire fence at the top. It's completely overgrown. You can't get down to it. I was really disappointed because I'd seen pictures like this
- from the 80s, this is from Clay Stuckey, where there was a railing. You could walk right down to it. You could see the aqueduct. So now it's a grumpy farmer has taken over and does not want any visitors. So I'm having to use Clay's pictures. Notice in the water bed, you can actually still see the timbers. And there's Clay. There's the timbers still laid on the bottom of that aqueduct.
- This is the other side has been modernized. But that aqueduct is now carrying the road over this creek. And there's where the canal used to be. I couldn't even get a picture of that. It wasn't any good. And there's Clay's town and country wagon. Ask him about that. It's an awesome car. So by 1839, they're nearing Lafayette.
- And they made it all the way down just north of Delphi there. And they need to switch banks. This whole time, they've been on the north bank of the Wabash. Now they want to go to the south bank. And to do that, you'd have to build an aqueduct. And the Eel River aqueduct sucks, so they don't want to do that. So it has to be another way. And so right there, they decide they're going to actually dam up the Wabash, get it to the right level, make the canal cross the Wabash, and then go on to the other side.
- And so I apologize for this. I couldn't find a better slide of this. I actually went there and took this picture. This is Mincer Tavern. This is where the canal actually entered the Wabash River. They had a lock there and they also had to build a bridge because the horses, the mules, have to get across to tow on the other side. So here's another view of it. So they actually just locked into the Wabash. They called it Lake Wabash at that point and crossed over, saved them an aqueduct.
- Meanwhile, they're also working on the White River Canal, which leaves Lawrenceburg and is heading towards Brookville. It's going to eventually go on further north, but they're just working on this first section. Notice that it goes into Ohio almost immediately, so they had to get the state of Ohio to cooperate with the canal project. Also, it means that the most interesting feature of the canal was built in Ohio. They had a tunnel, but they built in Ohio. Boo.
- We'll get to that in a minute. So this is a picture of Gordon's Lock. This is near Metamora. And the reason I have a picture of Gordon's Lock is because the Whitewater Canal was a very steep canal. They were actually going to have a drop of almost 500 feet and 76 miles. That's like the same drop that the Wabash and Erie Canal is having over hundreds of miles. And they were going to have 56 locks on this short little canal.
- And when you think about it, 491 feet. And they're doing it eight feet at a time. That's what you can do in a lock. You can go up or down eight feet. So you can imagine how expensive this canal is going to be to build. Now, in Cleves, Ohio, just behind the old inner urban depot, which I'm pretty sure is no longer there, is the remains of the tunnel.
- You imagine you could put a canal boat through there and the mule teams and the towpath all went through that tunnel. This is just the very top of it. That's all that's visible today. And these are both Clay photos. Most people, when I was like, I'm doing a presentation on canals, they're like, oh, that's cool. Clay's like, really? I've got a bunch of stuff for you. Someone actually, I think, sent a robot drone into this thing on YouTube so you can watch it.
- progress into the tunnel. By 1839, the Whitewater Canal has service from Lawrenceburg to Brookville. This is in the water stretch in Meadowmore, this recent picture. And so they've made it that far. Not a bad start. Meanwhile, they're also building the Central Canal. I mean, start everything all at once.
- And the central canal is going to, they're going to build the portion in Marion County first. This is a dumb idea. Because if you're going to make your canal live on tolls, you don't want to start a landlocked center portion of your canal, right? You want to build from the river out so that you can start collecting tolls right away. But instead, they build Marion County, Indianapolis first.
- And then they also work on the stretch through Morgan County. They grab it out, they clean it out, they measure it out, and they start building some of the early structures, sluices and stuff, but they don't get the canal built there yet. Why did they start it in Indianapolis? There's the modern state house. There's the Erie Canal. You can see why, right? Hey, legislators, look out the window. Look what we're doing. You want to come down to the canal? It's right here.
- This is a later picture when the canal is at low water, basically sort of a sewer. But they're building it in downtown Indianapolis to impress the government. That's why you would do that. This is the canal lock at Market Street, a stone lock right downtown Indy. This is, I think it's a Morris Street Bridge. I like this
- The commercial dream of early Indianapolis before railroads. What might have been before railroads awoke the dreamers? Spoiler alert. They actually get water in this canal all the way from Broad Ripple through downtown Indianapolis. And this is a picture up by Broad Ripple. And this is all done by 1839.
- This is a lecture about Monroe County, right? This is the Monroe County History Club. Remember Monroe County? Well, here's your canal. It was supposed to extend out of Indianapolis through Morgan County through the corner. Right there, the corner of Monroe County. It would have been on our side of the river. So it would have been in Monroe County. And it would have been out across from Gosport in the lowlands out there. There's a brief time.
- And sorry, this is where it would have connected with the Crosscut Canal at Point Commerce. There's a brief time when they thought that Point Commerce would become one of the major cities in Indiana. And then it would go on south from there to Evansville. Now, from Monroe County, that little chunk of land right out there by Mount Tabor, people in Mount Tabor became excited. They thought, hey, we may be the new county seat. Bloomington, that's going to be nothing compared to, I mean, we're going to have the canal.
- So there's Mount Tabor. Well, bad stuff happens. First off, there's a panic. And basically the panic of 1837 tightens the money supply for the frontier. The federal government says we will not accept state bank money for payments for land. And that made state bank money and private bank money not worth much. So there was a financial panic.
- And that's bad when you've borrowed a bunch of money. So that happened. Panic of 1837, this is a cartoon about how bad it was. The other thing that happened was they had hired every single worker, every single wheelbarrow, all the mules, all the shovels, all the masons to build all these canals all at once. And so that makes the price of everything go up.
- So now it's going to be more expensive because you're competing against yourself. You're bidding against yourself. So these are some Irish canal builders. Irish provided a lot of the labor and the backbone for these canals because there were the troubles in Ireland. At the time they were starving and building a canal even on the frontier was better than that. So guess what happens when you borrow a bunch of money and you can't pay it off?
- In 1839, the state of Indiana defaults on its loan. Indiana went bankrupt. August of 1839, the state's in a financial crisis. It can't make the interest payment. Remember when I said they couldn't make the interest payment? They couldn't. At first, they paid the interest with the money that they'd borrowed. That's a bad idea. And then when that ran out, then they stripped all the money out of the state bank and then all the tax receipts. And then when that ran out, there was nothing left.
- And so they couldn't pay it. Work stops on all the projects. And for most of the projects, work will never resume. So 1839, they go belly up. But the state doesn't want to give up.
- Right? They've got this Wabash and Erie Canal, and if they can just get it built a little bit farther, they're going to start getting the toll money, and then it's all going to be good, and they'll pay for everything. And so the state prints its own money, and it's backed by the land that the federal government had given it. And these were called Blue Dog Notes by Hoosiers because they felt that they weren't worth a blue dog.
- And the state's using this money to pay its workers to work on the project, and the workers are trying to pass this money off amongst Hoosiers, and they're like, it's not worth anything. But so the state limps along, is able to pay for a little bit, but nobody's gonna loan Indiana money. Where are they gonna get the money? So by 1840, they've almost reached Lafayette, and they're broke.
- So there's Lafayette, there's the Canal de Lafayette, 1840. Now in 1841, Indiana now owes $15 million because that interest just keeps getting added to the money that they've already borrowed. And banks in England and New York are getting nervous. Like, hey, we loaned that state money. You don't think they're not going to pay us back, do you? I mean, states don't go bankrupt, right?
- Well, and so they send out messages to Indiana. Hey, Indiana, you probably forgot, but you owe us money. You need to pay us. And Indiana does what any debtor does. They don't answer the phone. I don't know. Never heard about it. Actually, they don't have a plan. There's no legislator who has a plan. How are we going to pay this money? I don't know. Don't answer the letters.
- And that works for a while because England's a long way away. But eventually, the banks in England are like, hey, let's send somebody over there. And so then the creditors arrive. And they're like, hi, Indiana, you still owe us money? And they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, no, we know. Yeah, we're going to pay you soon. And this is a picture of the Bank of England, just to sort of show you the scale, right? Remember Indianapolis, the ox cart arriving?
- This is what the Bank of England looked like. And they want those backwoods Hoosiers to pay that $15 million. By July 4th, 1843, the canal is open to Toledo. And so people are like, hey, it's open to Toledo now. We're going to make so much money. Don't worry about it. We're going to pay it all off. That didn't happen. They made more money, but not anywhere near enough to pay it off.
- And so the creditors start looking at the books and they're like, this is not good. You guys don't have the money. You're never going to have the money. How are we going to figure this out? So there's big celebrations on July 4th, but it's not enough to save the canal. This is Waterville, Ohio in 1888. It's a good picture. So what happens? Well, in July of 1847, the Wabash and Erie Canal is turned over to the creditors.
- The state's like, hey, take the canal. It's all we got. And in exchange, the creditors are like, yeah, we'll wipe half your debt off. Now, that's not particularly fair. It's even worse because Indiana, in their rush to borrow the money, never even received all the money that they borrowed. They actually got ripped off. And now they're on, they have to pay back money they didn't even receive. It's just a terrible deal. But hey.
- That gets rid of like $7 million in debt. That helps. And then Indiana kind of like gets a sweet little pill to get into this. They encourage the creditors to finish the canal. You know, you guys will get all the receipts off the tolls if you finish the canal. We'll kick in a little money. We've got state land grant money. We'll give you $800,000 if you guys could complete the canal to Evansville now.
- If the creditors were smart, they would have said, heck no. But instead they said, yeah, that's a good idea. So from 1840 to 1849, the creditors build that canal and they get to Terre Haute. And this is where they should have stopped, but they didn't. Here's the canal coming right through downtown Terre Haute in 1849. Notice the canal doesn't actually connect to the river.
- It didn't in Fort Wayne either. You connected right by it and then everything would be offloaded into a warehouse and then it would be loaded from that warehouse onto riverboats who would then take it on the river. Canal boats and riverboats are different. So from 1849 to 1853 those creditors stick to their word and they build that canal from Terre Haute to Evansville.
- Now Evansville is probably the most excited of any Indiana city to get a canal, because they're going to be the terminus. This is where the canal is going to end, and they think they're going to make a phenomenal amount of money on this. But it takes so long for them to build the canal. But by the time it arrives, Evansville's not as excited. So the portion from Terre Haute to basically by Bloomfield Point Commerce, which
- Worthington today. It's called the Crosscut Canal, originally, in the original plan. And then the portion from there on down to Evansville was the remainder of the Central Canal. It's all going to be called the Wabashaniri Canal now. It's all going to be run as one part of one canal. So near Riley, Indiana, there is lock number 47. Now before
- I went to Lockport and I couldn't see anything because everything had gotten worse. But now I have the opposite story. This is Clay's photo from the 1980s of Lock number 47 near Riley, Indiana, just south and east of Terre Haute. Here it is today. They've cleaned it up. Matter of fact, they just cleaned that up a couple weeks ago. So there's that same lock.
- It started as part of the Crosscat Canal in 1836. It's watered by 1850. It's a very rare stone lock. Almost all the locks in the wall of the machinery canal were built out of wood to save money. But they built this one out of stone. It's an amazing structure. Really, the left wall there is complete. The right wall is sort of half complete. That's where the gates were. That's the pocket for the gate that would have
- There's pockets at either end. You have to have a gate at either end for a lock to work. There's my wife, Amy, standing in the lock gate just to give you an idea of scale. And then there she is showing us how tall it is. So it'd raise you about eight feet. That's what locks usually did. Amazing work. This is all hand carved, hand chiseled. Look at the edges between those stones.
- I mean, these guys, this guy built this lock to last. So make a trip up to Riley, go see this lock, it's definitely worth it. So there's, that's Lockport, that's where that lock is. And right here, the Wabash and Erie Canal is going through a very difficult stretch. It's going over another continental divide. This time, to the left, everything will drain to the Wabash River, and to the right, everything will drain to the Eel River.
- And so to get over that, they need water, like always. So they're gonna use Honey Creek on one side, and they're gonna use the Eel River on the other, and they're gonna try to bridge this. That stretch right where the blue arrow is still didn't have enough water, so they have to build several different reservoirs. Just south of Riley, this is the Wabash and Erie crosscut. They say this is summit level.
- I don't know if this is the exact summit, but it's near it. This is called the Blue Hole. It's a stretch of canal that still has water. It was a natural slough, and there are people living on the canal today. I'm so jealous. That driveway with the minivan, that's the canal towpath. So nearby, this is one of the reservoirs. This is a picture from the 80s, because I couldn't get a good picture today. This is, once again, Clay provided me this.
- This is Sponge Creek Reservoir. And between those two red lines, that's the dam. So there's the earth and remains. They built a dam around this huge field. And it would have enclosed acres of ground. It would have been a very big reservoir. Nothing left but corn, just like a lot of Indiana. So now we've made it down to Point Commerce. There's 111 miles to go.
- And we'll go through those 111 real quick. This is the central canal portion. Now right there where the red arrow is is Petersburg. It was originally called Petersburg. The only reason it's mentionable in this canal lecture is because there's an old canal warehouse there. It's still there to this day. This is a Hohenberger photograph around 1900.
- There's a Clay Stuckey photo around 1980. Still there today, old Wabash Erie Canal Depot. By 1853, the canal finally reaches Evansville, and once again, it does not connect to the Ohio River. It gets that close. You tell me you were 500 miles and you were one block short, but they're gonna transfer all their goods.
- Evansville is ecstatic. They finally get the canal, 1853. So here we go. Wabashne Canal, 468 miles. It connects Toledo to Evansville. What an accomplishment. It's the longest canal ever built in the United States. It's the second longest canal ever built in the history of the world. Second only to the Grand Canal in China. They did it all in 21 years.
- It's kind of amazing when you think of picks and shovels and mules 21 years to build the world's longest canal. It was finished in 1853. What a success. Well, from tragedy to triumph, the canal's golden era. First off, the canal peaked before it was finished. The peak years of the canal were from 1840 to 1855.
- The highest tolls and water rent were collected in 1852, one year before it was done. So after it was done, it was all downhill, which seems wrong, but that's what happened. So a lot of growth happened in the northern Wabash Valley. Huntington, Peru, Logansport, Delphi, all the way down to Terre Haute,
- Those cities all grew directly because of the canal. Fort Wayne and Lafayette grew the most. They grew like gangbusters. The canal was huge business for them. It was great for those cities. Just like people predicted. This canal is going to help people in northern Indiana. It did. So let's look at Lafayette. This is a map from 1868.
- See all those blue arrows? Those are all industries on the canal. Every one of those is a factory. And there's two reasons they're on the canal. One, because they're shipping everything in and out on the canal. And the other is because they're using the canal for water power. Water rent was something that the canal would charge you. And you could use some of the canal water. Remember, it's always flowing.
- at a slow rate, but it's always flowing. And you could take that water into your factory and you could use it to turn all of your different wheels and belts and pulleys, and then you could dump the water back into the canal. And the next guy could use it because it still had the power to run the factory. So the canal provided power, the canal provided water, and it provided a means to ship in and out. So Lafayette grew phenomenally.
- Lafayette went from hardly being a place by 1849, there's so many people in Lafayette, they're sending a group of guys out to the gold rush. They're like, that's too crowded here, I'm gonna have to go to the frontier. That's all because of the canal. The railroad comes into Lafayette by 1868, and look where it goes. It also follows the canal. And it's doing that because it wants to get down to those industries. It wants to get down to the center of the town, which is all by the canal. So the canal,
- puts the industries in Lafayette. It puts the railroad where it goes in Lafayette. The canal sets Lafayette's growth. South of town, this is still Lafayette, but looking a little bit south, we've got a whole nother cluster of industries along the canal. And then way south of town, we've got an industry that is still an industry today. It is still Cargill. They do some sort of grain processing there. It's still an industry.
- even as we speak. And I used to drive by it all the time. They'd have a sign, you know, 27 days since an accident or whatever. This is not Lafayette pictured. But let's just talk about some of the stuff that Lafayette shipped out. This is, in a year, they would ship out 40,000 barrels of flour, 40,000 barrels of pork, 1 million bushels of corn,
- Four million pounds of bacon. Four million pounds of lard. There seems to be a relationship between bacon and lard. And this is all in one year. And all these numbers are more than this. They shift out more than that per year. This is a picture of a packet boat near Delphi. All sorts of different types of boats plied the canal. Some boats went the whole trip. They went from Toledo to Evansville.
- Some boats only did one section. Some boats were used in relays. They were owned by the same company. Different, lots of different boats, different types of boats. Some only held cargo. Some only held passengers. Some held both, like this boat. You have passengers on the bottom, you have cargo on the top. Delphi was famous for hams. They shipped out tons of hams on the Wabash and Erie Canal.
- Fort Wayne also has phenomenal growth. I won't spend as much time on it, but does the exact same thing as Lafayette. There's their factory district on the canal. This is an excursion boat in Fort Wayne. This is a wedding. This is at Attica, Indiana, or near Attica, Indiana. This is the whole wedding party.
- We zoom in, we see there's the band on top of the boat there. I assume the bride and groom are in the middle, but I don't know. And in the back of the boat, you see all the people peeking out the back of the boat there. What a cool way to have a wedding, right? Go get married on the canal. And notice they've got a, looks like a couple horses, maybe three that are going to pull them. The canal had a speed limit on it. You weren't allowed to white cap.
- As far as I know, there were no canal motorboat policemen chasing after people. But certain boats had a reputation. And the reason you weren't allowed to white cap is because that damaged the banks. And it damaged the locks. And so you didn't want to disturb the water too much. So by 1854,
- Now it's all constructed, and we're back to that spot on the canal where they needed the reservoirs. See the Honey Creek line there? There's the Yale River line. So this is the part where they needed to bridge that gap. And right about there in 1854, a bunch of Clay County farmers, a mob, this is a photograph from the actual time,
- attacked and breached Birch Creek Reservoir. They'd knocked a big hole in the side of the reservoir. What were they doing? They'd been begging to get the canal, and now that it's here, they're going to attack it? Well, 1854, there was a cholera outbreak. There'd been several cholera outbreaks while they were building the canal. At the time, they didn't really know what caused cholera. They knew you could get it from people who had it.
- And they figured that you got it from all the stuff that was spewing out of the people who had it from their bodily fluids. But they weren't entirely sure. If you got cholera, there really wasn't a cure. This is a cartoon of your two choices. You could take something that would make you go to the bathroom even more, or you could take something that would stop you up. Either way, you were probably dead, maybe dead, they didn't know.
- is incredibly frightening. Whole Indiana towns were wiped out from cholera. When it hit the Wabash and Erie Canal in the 1830s, whole work gangs were wiped out. It was a terrible, terrible disease. And what made it worst was it was spread by water. Not only could you get it from the bodily fluids, but if those got into the water, then you could get it from drinking cold water. And it's a bacterium and they couldn't see it. Not at all. Not even in the water that it was in.
- And so they had no idea, really. Doctors had some idea. Here's a hand bill that was given out. Cholera, be temperate in eating and drinking. Avoid raw vegetables and unripe fruit, because they're not getting cooked. Cooking kills the bacteria. They didn't know that, but cooking did. Abstain from cold water. If you boiled your water, you wouldn't get it. So they're starting to figure it out.
- but not the farmers in Clay County. They're already behind doctors. They're pretty sure that cholera is caused by miasma or mist, and that the mist was coming off of water. And you can see it when you go out early in the morning or late at night. You'll see that mist coming off the water. That's disease, and that will kill you, or so they thought. And so that reservoir that they just built
- Oh, that's full of mist. And there's mist along the canal. They're killing us with this damn canal. And what's really causing the mist is the rotting logs. That's where the disease is coming from, the rotting logs. So if you want to stay healthy, you breach the canal, you drain out that water, and you stop the mist, and you stop the rotting logs. So that's what they did. They attacked the canal.
- Didn't stop cholera, but it breached the canal and then that whole summer they didn't have enough water to run boats on the southern end of the canal. The government fixed it, they breached it again. They breached that Birch Creek Reservoir over and over for a period of several years. It's really unfortunate when your own citizens are attacking your canal. But what really happened,
- What really happened was the rise of the railroads. So let's go back to this slide and let's go back to those fun facts. Longest canal ever built. Second longest in the world. 21 years. Finished 1853. Now I'm going to add one more fact. First section abandoned 1860. Ouch. Seven years. The whole canal would be abandoned by 1874.
- doesn't sound so successful now. What happened? Well, the southern end of the canal was always the weakest end. It struggled with low water. It never had the receipts of the northern end of the canal. It hadn't grown as much. And so the Newberry section, which was from there to about there, was abandoned in 1860. The creditors who built this canal, they never made any money on it. And after a while,
- couldn't even pay for the upkeep, the receipts for the tolls. And so what they did is they leased off different sections of the canal, and they were like, hey, if you want to run this section of the canal, keep all the tolls you want, and then you keep it up. And so then when that happened, one of the canal lessees couldn't maintain his section, the water went out, and the canal was breached. Now there's three reasons why they give up on the canal. What a beautiful day this is.
- Well, reason number one is weather. A lot of years, the canal, especially on the southern end, was dry. It was too low. They didn't have enough rain. It was hard to provide water for the southern section. Then there was too much water. A lot of years, there was too much water. It flooded. And then when it flooded, the canal was underwater. You can't use it then anyway. And then in the winter, it froze. You couldn't use it then either. So the weather was working against the canal.
- Everywhere that an aqueduct carried water under a canal, if it flooded, it could wash out the whole banks. This is a recent picture in Ohio of, I think, the Ohio and Erie Canal being washed out by one of our recent rains. And this is the sort of thing they had to deal with. In one year in the 1860s, the Wabash overtopped its banks eight times. So eight times they had to repair the canal. So weather was one of the factors. They couldn't afford to keep it repaired.
- Which brings us to the next thing, maintenance. All those wood parts on all those locks, all those wood parts in the sluices, in the aqueducts, all that wood has to be replaced eventually. And that maintenance costs money. And if your canal is just barely and maybe not breaking even, you don't have enough money for maintenance. So this is Miami and Erie Canal in Ohio. But you can see the wood locks, the giant
- wood handles from the sluice gates. All this stuff has to be repaired. The walls of the locks, the Wabash Canal, they made them in wood to save money. So those have to be repaired. Ironically, the wood that's under water never rots. You can dig it up today. This is a highway. They discovered a lock under the highway near Fort Wayne.
- And it's all wood. It just didn't rot because it was underground, underwater, it stayed fine. So the stuff under the water didn't rot, but the stuff at the water level and above rotted very quickly. So in about 20 years, everything that they had built was ready to be replaced. This is the Deer Creek aqueduct. It collapsed in 1874 while a boat and mule team were going over it.
- I'm sure the mule died. I'm not sure if the mule driver lived or not. I've seen two different stories. But when that collapsed, that pretty much ended water on the northern end of the canal. So maintenance was the second reason. But the third reason and the biggest reason was railroads. So looking at this is a map of all the things that got finished out of that giant 1836 Mammoth Improvement Bill. So we've got the Wyebash and Erie Canal. We've got the Whitewater Canal.
- Everything else is roads and railroads. The state was able to build those. So in 1842, when it's clear that the state can't afford to do any of this stuff, they pass a bill to sell off all their failed investments, all their failed projects. One of them is the Madison and Indianapolis Railroad.
- That is the hill going up out of Madison. This is a wonderful photograph. It's an incredibly steep grade. They actually eventually had to have a special locomotive to get up it. That's the Ruben Wells. It's in the basement of the Children's Museum. You can go see that today. But that is the Madison in Indianapolis. This is the first railroad really built in the state. 1842, the state turns it over to private investors, and they're going to get it done.
- This is James Brooks' home. He's the future president of the New Albany and Salem Railroad. And in 1847, the state granted the failed New Albany Lafayette Pike to New Albany investors who were going to make it into a railroad. And they've already started building it. The state's already spent a bunch of money. They've spent $339,000 grading it.
- And that grade would get you up out of New Albany towards Salem. And it went through some of the roughest terrain. This is near Pekin by Floyd Knobs. This is the railroad grade. See that rock on the right of the railroad? There's that same rock again. And that same rock again. That same rock's still there. You can go stand on it and watch bicyclists struggle their way up the hill.
- So the New Albany and Salem's gonna go to Salem and then they're supposed to build the Lawrence Port. And then what they do is they build the old Plank Road all the way up to Lafayette. 1851, they start building. And it connects all the county seats. So there's Jeffersonville, New Albany, Salem, Bedford, Bloomington, Crawfordsville, or Greencastle, then Crawfordsville.
- And that's exactly what the Plank Road was supposed to do. So the railroad just copies its route, with the exception of the detoured Orleans. And so that's the other effect that Monroe County has. Remember, this is a lecture about Monroe County. We get a railroad out of the failed canal bill. So there's the New Albany in Salem, and it's connecting the Ohio River with Lake Michigan. And they're going to,
- get their rail shipped to them because you can't buy it in the United States. So they're gonna get it shipped to them from England. And this is the story of how they get their rail. It's strap rail. It's gonna come from Liverpool and Cardiff all the way down around Florida, go up the Mississippi River to Madison. So the whole way is by boat. The next section of rail they get, this is like normal T rail, it's gonna come a different route.
- because they've already built up, sorry I said Madison, I meant New Albany, they've already built up from New Albany. So the second section of rail, this time it's gonna land at New York City, it's gonna take the Wabash and Erie Canal, it's gonna go across Lake Erie, it's gonna take the Wabash, or sorry, it's gonna cross the Erie Canal, across Lake Erie, Wabash and Erie Canal, and then connect to the railroad. So the railroad's getting its rail from the canal.
- The third batch of rail is gonna go around Michigan and complete it that way. So the canal's a vital part of this transportation infrastructure, but it's building the thing that's going to replace it. The first Crawfordsville and Wabash locomotive. It was a tiny little short line that ran from Crawfordsville to Lafayette. It was built by William Norris in 1851. William Norris is in Philadelphia,
- Little red line, that's where the railroad is. How are they going to get from there to there? Well, they go across that Pennsylvania line of improvements, and down the Ohio River, then up the Ohio and Erie Canal, then down the Wabash and Erie Canal. So once again, the canal is bringing the rail, and this time bringing the locomotive. I wanted to find a picture of a locomotive on a canal boat, but I couldn't. So here's a flat boat. This is the kind of boat it would have ridden on.
- But what happens is instead of taking the rest of the canal down to the Ohio River, you just take the railroad, right? You go down the Wabashan area to canal to Lafayette and then you get on the railroad. And the Monon's biggest trade partner in the early years of the railroad was the canal. So the railroad starts stealing the canal business. That whole southern end isn't even really needed. Just take the railroad.
- And the railroads can connect to the steam ships. You don't need the canal to do it. Look at Evansville, the city that was most excited to get the canal. This is in 1852. Oh, there's a railroad already there. It's infiltrated the city. Railroads are everywhere. By 1862, the canal is filled in in Evansville. That's a bridge that used to go over the canal. Now it just goes over an empty street.
- The Whitewater Canal towpath is sold to a railroad in 1863. So they give up their towpath, let them build a railroad on its flat. So that's in Metamora, it's a scenic railroad today. So the Wabash and Erie Canal is abandoned in 1861 between Terre Haute and Evansville. The northern section is abandoned by 1874. The canal property is sold in 1876.
- And by 1885, the Evansville and Indianapolis Railroad owns most of the towpath of the southern section. Here's the famous triple crossing where three railroads crossed over each other in Indiana. The E and I, that's the one that's built on the old canal. That's railroads running right on the towpath. You can see where the canal bed would be. The Monon's crossing over and above it is the Illinois Central. So originally, it would have been a canal crossing, but the railroads
- Built right on it. Started with this picture. This is near Fountain, Indiana. There's the Wabashonary towpath, and there's the railroad on top of it. This is a picture from Virginia, but I love it because it sums up what happened so well. See the piles of ties? Some canal boat has delivered these ties to the towpath to be turned into a railroad.
- Railroads in 1850 is the top map. Railroads in 1870 is the bottom map. You can't even see Indiana anymore. We're just part of a blue blob. The whole state is covered by railroads. The railroads win. So, one last little story. Indianapolis has a canal. Why? Still to this day, they have a canal. This is the remains of the Fall Creek aqueduct. In 1847, after a flood, the central canal in Indianapolis was sold off
- to investors, $2,245. The incomplete portion in Morgan County is sold for $600. That had cost the state almost a million dollars to build. So they lose a lot of money on that. This is a photo of the aqueduct over Fall Creek after its collapse in 1904. It's the same aqueduct that failed in 1847 that made them sell it.
- They rebuilt that aqueduct. This is in 1882. This is the fourth time they rebuilt that aqueduct. You can see the state capitals under that blue arrow. That's the capitol building way off in the distance. Here's the fifth time they rebuilt that aqueduct. It's like Monty Python. Why did they keep rebuilding it? It keeps collapsing. This is the thing that precipitated the first photo.
- the canal disappearing out of the canal bed. So why does Indianapolis keep building this thing? Because they built it again after the 1904 collapse. Here it is today, still there, still watered. Here it is from the side. The reason they keep building it is because of the water. They actually are selling off the water. It becomes part of the Indianapolis water works.
- And they're selling off the water to industries along the canal. This is a photo from the 1980s. You see the green elevators. You see the industries along the canal. They were along the canal using that water 100 years after the canal was abandoned. And today, it's now used for recreation. It's been turned over to the Park Service. And it's this beautiful jewel through downtown Indianapolis that never really hauled a single canal boat, but still to this day.
- is a watered section of canal. And that's the end. There's really only two good sources, Indiana Canals by Paul Fatute, and the Wabash and Erie Canal Park in Delphi, Indiana is an excellent museum. Are there any questions? I heard a yes. Yes.
- Absolutely true. Actually, if you go on Google Earth today, the whole southern, or big chunks of the southern end of the canal, you can actually follow because they're farmer's ditches. And so they still use the canal to drain away unwanted water. Yes? Do you like to have your own? That's a really great question. I don't know any, downtown Indianapolis,
- all along it that's been turned into pedestrian walkways. Lots of railroads have become bike paths and some of the railroads that were on the canal have become bike paths but I don't have an exact number for you but it is another recreational use of the canals today. Yes they do and they have a wonderful museum which is right here and they also have a watered stretch of canal one of the only in the state.
- I know they had one on the stern. I don't think they would have one on the bow, but I don't know. You know, pretty much they're going in a straight line. You know, steering is not something they had to do a whole lot of, but. Yes. And so then the rudder guy is always pushing away. Right.
- It was a road. I'm not sure if it was. They just recently found one. I think that picture's from the 1960s. So they found several locks in road projects. Well, I grew up in Fort Wayne. I remember the lock through the canals up there. And Fort Wayne still has. I mean, you can go around. There's still quite a bit of canal remnants up there. Why didn't you use the Long Island River on South Ohio River? Why build a cross to it?
- I guess the honest answer is political. They're trying to connect more population centers by coming through more of the center of the state. So when they're trying to butter their bread and get everybody to agree to the canal, that route was pleasing to them. Also the Wabash, the lower end of the Wabash has more flooding and height fluctuation from the river. It's a little bit wilder part of the river.
- which would have made it a little bit harder to build. But remember, this is an Indiana canal, and so you don't want to necessarily build it right on the border of your state. It'd be better to build it a little bit inland, and that way, the counties on both sides could use it. I'm from Clay City, Indiana. We have a lot there, lots of where it is, and the river's still there. Are you talking about over the hill? No, I don't know what you mean. Oh, I'm nervous about that. I think you had a monopoly there.
- All right, there's no more. Any other questions? Yeah.
- Well, the water power is coming from the canal itself, right? So... Well, you can also put the water back into the canal itself, too. And just the... Well, the canal's not level. So the upper end could go back through it, but... Right.
- Oh, there's a piece of paper that's going around. We're going to try to organize an Ellitsville Depot walk sometime this fall, where you can see the sites of the three Ellitsville Depots for the Monon Railroad. If you're interested, put your name and email on that piece of paper. Yes?
- The reason that so many people died building the canal wasn't of the canal itself, but it was the disease that swept through the workers camps while they were building the canal. So they were particularly hard hit by cholera because all these workers were living out in the open basically and they have very rudimentary sanitation.
- And so they're spreading cholera, they're getting cholera. So it was absolutely brutal. And then also mosquito-borne illnesses hit them very bad as well. The one solution they had was rye whiskey. They believed that rye whiskey would cure cholera or at least prevent it. At least made them drunk. All right. Thank you very much. You've been a wonderful audience. Appreciate it.