In a manner of minutes we left the hustle and bustle of modern life and were whisked back to a slower-paced life that included travel by boat on the Ohio & Erie Canal. It was the first canal to be built in the West, following the completion of the Erie Canal across New York.
The 308-mile canal, with a minimum width of 40 feet and depth of four feet, was dug completely by hand by Irish and German immigrants as well as local farmers. Their pay? Thirty cents a day and a jigger of whiskey if they wished.
Construction began at Cleveland in 1825. By 1832, it stretched to Portsmouth on the Ohio River with 146 locks. Before the Canal was built, it took 30 days to travel from Akron to New York City; by canal 10 days.
For more than 25 years, canals were the principal means of transportation of both people and goods. Their demise came at the hands of the iron rail.
Our first stop was the Canal Visitor Center, housed in a structure that once served as a tavern and earned the name, Hell’s Half Acre. As we walked from room to room looking at the photographs of the rough-looking canal boat men, I could well imagine how it got its name.
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