Political Quotes

“in April, 1808, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin proposed to the Senate a national system of roads and canals, an idea feasible because payment of the National debt was within reach. It was a time for thinking big. A canal between the Hudson River and Lake Erie was one of his recommendations. As assemblyman from Onondaga County, Joshua Forman, traveled to Washington to tell President Jefferson that New York was ready to proceed with a canal 350 miles through the wilderness. Jefferson said ``. . . it is little short of madness to think of it at this day,'' and later wrote that New York had anticipated by a full century the means to build such a waterway. New York proceeded on its own. Seventeen years and $7,143,789 later we had our canal, the Erie Canal. Towns sprang up along the way, often at the locks, and prospered. Lockport, Spencerport, Fairport, Macedon, Utica, Canajoharie, Scotia. Then the railroads came, and some could not maintain that prosperity. The canal was rebuilt and enlarged between 1835 and 1862 to accommodate larger vessels. At the turn of the 20th century much of the original channel was abandoned and a new one was created by greatly altering natural waterways. This canal system continued to support considerable freight traffic until the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959. Today many segments and fragments of the original canal still exist across the state, as do examples of the first expansion in the 1830s.”