Transportation
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The Erie Canal followed a path carved by nature through the eastern Appalachian Mountains. Construction began in Rome, New York, on July 4, 1817, and the canal opened in Buffalo in 1825. Governor Dewitt Clinton, one of the canal's greatest champions, presided over a "Wedding of the Waters" ceremony soon after the waterway opened, although critics had earlier derided it as "Clinton's Big Ditch." Jesse Hawley, a New York flour merchant serving a 20-month prison sentence for bankruptcy, wrote a series of essays in 1807 that proved hugely influential to the canal's creation.
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Root, New York · United States
