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The Erie Canal is a canal in New York that originally ran about from Albany, on the Hudson River to Buffalo, at Lake Erie. It was built to create a navigable water route from New York City and the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. Today, the canal is part of the cross-state east-west route of the New York State Canal System (formerly known as the New York State Barge Canal). First proposed in 1807, its construction began in 1817. The canal contains 36 locks and a total elevation differential of about . It opened on October 26, 1825. In a time when bulk goods were limited to pack animals (an eighth-ton [] maximum〔''"Works of Man"'', Ronald W. Clark, ISBN 0-670-80483-5 (1985) 352 pages, Viking Penguin, Inc, NYC, NY, quotation page 87: "There was little experience moving bulk loads by carts, while a packhorse would [sic, meaning 'could' or 'can only'] carry only an eighth of a ton. On a soft road a horse might be able to draw 5/8ths of a ton. But if the load were carried by a barge on a waterway, then up to 30 tons could be drawn by the same horse."〕), and there were no steamships or railways, water was the most cost-effective way to ship bulk goods. The canal was the first transportation system between the eastern seaboard (New York City) and the western interior (Great Lakes) of the United States that did not require portage. It was faster than carts pulled by draft animals, and cut transport costs by about 95%. The canal fostered a population surge in western New York and opened regions farther west to settlement. It was enlarged between 1834 and 1862. In 1918, the western part of the canal was enlarged to become part of the New York State Barge Canal, which ran parallel to the eastern half and extended to the Hudson River. In 2000, the United States Congress designated the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor )〕 to recognize the national significance of the canal system as the most successful and influential human-built waterway and one of the most important works of civil engineering and construction in North America.〔 Mainly used by recreational watercraft since the retirement of the last large commercial ship (rather than boat), the ''Day Peckinpaugh'' in 1994, the canal saw a recovery in commercial traffic in 2008.〔 〕 ==Background== From the first days of the expansion of the British colonies from the coast of North America into the heartland of the continent, a recurring problem was that of transportation between the coastal ports and the interior. Close to the seacoast, rivers often provided adequate waterways, but the presence of the Appalachian Mountains, converteep into coastal states. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Erie Canal」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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