The Ohio & Erie Canal, the ditch that built the state
Dug by hand from 1825, 308 miles from Cleveland to the Ohio River, it cut a journey of weeks down to eighty hours — and a flood ended it.
Before railways, Ohio’s problem was that its goods could not move. The state’s answer was a canal dug across it by hand.
The National Park Service records that, using design specifications from the Erie Canal, “construction on the Ohio & Erie Canal began throughout the state in 1825”. It was slow work: “It took two years of hand digging to complete the section from Cleveland to Akron, and five more years to finish all the sections.” The labour was largely immigrant — the canal was “dug largely by Irish and German immigrants”.
The finished waterway was four feet deep and ran 308 miles from Cleveland to Portsmouth on the Ohio River, joining the Great Lakes to the Mississippi watershed. It was complete by 1832.
The effect on distance was immediate. The Park Service notes that “By the fall of 1832, the canal promised passage from Cleveland to Cincinnati in 80 hours, a trip that had once taken weeks.” Towns that sat on the canal grew; towns that did not were passed by. Akron exists in its modern form largely because of where the canal had to climb.
The canal era did not end gradually. The Park Service records that “The Flood of 1913 damaged the canal, making it too expensive to repair.” Railways had already taken most of the traffic; the flood finished the argument.
What survives is the towpath, the track where mules once walked, now the Towpath Trail through Cuyahoga Valley National Park and beyond. The route that moved coal and wheat is now the route people walk on a Sunday.
Read the Park Service history: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/history-of-the-ohio-erie-canal.htm
See the Ohio & Erie Canalway National Heritage Area: https://nps.gov/places/ohio-and-erie-canalway-national-heritage-area.htm