O is for Ohio Canal

by Kim Van Sickler

[Kim's posts will all relate to her MG historical fiction novel with a paranormal twist: Muleskinner. Here's the pitch: An extraordinary canal dog gives twelve-year-old mule driver, Clay, the conviction to fight against a highly suspect Indenture agreement his pa supposedly signed...right before Pa was found swinging from a tree above Lonesome Lock.]

In 1825 the Ohio legislature authorized the construction of the Ohio Canal (now known as the Ohio & Erie Canal). The idea originated from the new and prospering Erie Canal running through NY and PA. Goods would arrive via Lake Erie to Cleveland and get shipped south through the length of Ohio to Portsmouth, a distance of a little over 300 miles. Raw materials like coal, quarry stone, and crops would be shipped back north. Thanks to the canal, Cleveland and Akron, little nothing towns, blossomed. The Canal era petered out in 1913 with the Great Flood, the nail in the coffin of a dying transportation industry, thanks to the faster, more efficient railroads.

The earliest known photo of the Ohio Canal, taken circa 1859 in the East Flats section of Cleveland.