Apples apples apples

[eDJ_]

Yes, I lived in the Zanesville, Ohio area at one time and dated a girl who came from Coshocton, Ohio. She took me to her hometown which was once a large terminal on the Erie Canal and that part of the town was restored as Roscoe Village Heritage center.

There was a Canal Boat that had been built by "canal historians" there that you could board and be towed along the canal. There are kayakers using the canals today for sports and recreation. Some of these recently built canal boats are used for towing tourist out and back on open stretches of the canal. A lot of fishermen fish the canals too.

Roscoe Village in Coshocton, Ohio

Waverly, Ohio was another large terminal on the canal too. When driving to Columbus (state capital) north on S Rt 23 thru Waverly you are driving right over the old canal channel. The Post Office there has this old WPA era mural painted on one of it's walls. You notice the red brick building with the wooden outdoor stair case on the side of it ? It is still there. (or was the last time I went thru there)

Waverly, Ohio Canal Park

But all across Ohio there are ruins of the Erie and the Miami canal. In New York there are similar. Some segments of these canals have been restored for historic value and tourism.

The lower part of the Ohio Erie Canal was prone to flooding. Farmers and timber businessmen clear cropped a lot of trees and there was nothing to help stop the big floods after the Civil War. So by 1913 the last huge flood thru that area nearly destroyed that end of the canal. Had it not been for this unchecked agricultural practice.....Portsmouth, Ohio may have become as large as Cleveland, Ohio today. The last huge flood was in 1937. Since then the Corp of Engineers has worked to build lakes along side the rivers to serve as catch basins for water run off. They have spillways so that they can release the water they fill up with once the rivers begin to return to their normal levels.

Some ask how canal boats got from the New York Erie Canal at Buffalo, NY to the Ohio Erie Canal at Cleveland, Oh. Well, steam boats (tugs) were built to ply Lake Ontario and Lake Erie so that groups of canal boats could be tied together as floatillas and towed across those stretches of the Great Lakes to get back and forth. With the help of these tugs the canal boats could be towed across those parts of the Great Lakes just a few days. So that within 13 days or so one could travel from Albany, NY to Portsmouth, Oh.

 

[eDJ_]

As a final post on this thread, and the movement of apples and other agricultural goods thru our early America I'd mention the Canadian contribution to enable the Canals to be much more effective. It was to their benefit to join in the canal building industry as well with their cooperative spirit.
The Canadians offered the missing link to our canal system.

Niagara Falls was a steep declining area to attempt to build a canal bypass around it from the American side of Lake Ontario. But the Canadians were willing to build on their Canadian soil the Welland Canal which was 27 miles long with 8 sets of Locks to better enable navigation between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Their contribution brought the American Canal system to a much better state of operation. Certainly it benefited them commercially but they also went on to built steam boats that could tow canal boats about Lake Ontario as well.

The Canadian PS Frontenac built in 1816 was a side paddle wheel steam boat that could travel at 10 mph. Built in Earnesttown, Ontario in 1886. Later the Ontario was built on the American side of Lake Ontario. Following numbers like the Ontario were built for a fleet by an American shipping company.



1816 Canadian Steam Boat PS Frontenac on Lake Ontario

American Steam Boat "Ontario" 1817


On Lake Erie the first steam boat that towed canal boats was the Walk-In-The -Water.

1818 American Steam Boat Walk-In-The-Water on Lake Erie, Lake Huron, and Lake Michigan

The Walk-In-The-Water was a slower boat that traveled at 8 mph.

This map shows the Welland Canal the Canadians built and miles between Buffalo, NY to Cleveland, Oh and on to Toledo, Oh



In the time of the Welland Canal about 40 million tonnes (88 billion pounds) of cargo per year, including iron ore, wheat, corn, soybeans, bituminous coal, and manufactured iron, steel, and cement passed thru it.

Travel on water was much more efficient than over land. Steam Boats could travel 100 miles a day (or more) where wagons or stage coaches could only travel 7 to 12 miles a day in the early 1800's. This is how the Erie Canals reduced shipping cost up to 90% and helped to build America's westward movement.

In this time the first apple that was a commercial success for shipping was the Ben Davis apple. The rapid transport of the canal system undoubtedly prompted it's success. All of my life I've heard old folks talk of Ben Davis apples and wondered why.