Men swinging picks and lifting shovels took nine years to dig a waterway from Cleveland to Portsmouth, leaving a ditch 40 feet wide, 4 feet deep, and 308 miles long. Though some thought only a drunk man would take on such work, farmers hoping for better markets and immigrants eager to build homes labored side by side for 30 cents a day and five jiggers of whisky, which was believed to help ward off fatal malaria, even as graveyards marked their path across the state. Leading the diggers with strict attention to the quality of materials and workmanship was Alfred Kelley, Irish by birth and an engineer by choice, chosen to see the project through because the country depended on the waterway to open a frontier. The Ohio-Erie Canal later declined as railroads grew more popular and people favored faster travel. In 1861, the legislature leased the canal for private operation until 1878, after which it returned to the state in seriously depreciated condition, and a breach at Newark made travel from Lake Erie to Portsmouth impossible. The flood of 1913 ended the canal as raging rivers tore aqueducts from their piers, washed away canal banks, and forced the blasting of the last sturdy lock gates to release water trapped behind them.