The Erie Canal: Compressing Time And Distance

Ground-Breaking Ceremony by J. Erwin Porter, ca. 1960. The first shovel of dirt was ceremoniously overturned outside Rome, NY on July 4, 1817. Credit: NYS Museum

On the third episode of A New York Minute In History we explore the Empire State’s most ambitious engineering feat…the Erie Canal. Completed in 1825, it transformed New York and the nation by compressing time and distance, providing the fuel for an explosion of commerce, communication and social change.