The Wabash & Erie Canal ran 468 miles from Toledo, Ohio, to Evansville, Indiana, linking Indiana to New York and the East Coast by way of the Erie Canal and to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico by way of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Construction in Indiana began in 1832 at Fort Wayne, passenger and freight boats were regularly bringing people and manufactured goods to Delphi and Carroll County by 1840, the canal was open to Toledo by 1843, and it was completed to Evansville by 1853. It became a cultural conduit that brought fashions and products from eastern urban centers to Delphi and the Midwest while opening markets for Delphi's lime and paper businesses during the canal era. As the longest man-made structure in the United States, it was an engineering work that in Indiana required 73 locks and 18 aqueducts to carry boats across uneven terrain, raising and lowering them from level to level. In 1838 community leader and businessman Reed Case received most of the contract for building the canal between Logansport and Lafayette, with Delphi midway between them, and in 1844 he built the federal-style Reed Case House in Canal Park. The canal closely followed the Wabash River and its tributaries to use a relatively level valley and a steady water source, and by Delphi its slip gave freight boats a central place to unload and take on cargo while the Dugan, Case, Spears Warehouse at the head of the slip became a main clearing house for goods. Typical locks, built of wood or stone, were 15 feet wide and 90 to 100 feet long, with some designed to lift boats 6 feet and others as much as 10 feet. Canal boats were built specifically for this waterway, since steamboats, paddleboats, barges, riverboats, and sailboats common in the 1830s were not suited to canal travel; most canal boats were long, narrow, shallow-draft craft not over 14 feet wide and 80 feet long, pulled by mules or horses along a towpath by a driver known as a hoagy. Heavy timber lock gates at each end of a lock, fitted with iron wicket gates controlled by lock keys and held in an upstream pattern by a mitre sill, regulated the flow of water so boats could enter the chamber, be raised or lowered, and continue on their way.