CANAL 



1146 



CANAL 



described under the headings ERIE CANAL and 

 NEW YORK STATE BARGE CANAL. 



The enlargement of these waterways by the 

 state of New York, which necessitated an 



FIRST LOCK BUILT ON THE ERIE CANAL 



expenditure of over $150,000,000, represents a 

 revival of interest in canal building. During 

 the era of railroad expansion following the 

 War of Secession, public interest in artificial 

 waterways suffered a noticeable decline. Nearly 

 all of the important canals in the country were 

 opened before the war. Among these are the 

 Chesapeake and Ohio, between Washington 

 and Cumberland, Md. (1850), the Illinois and 

 Michigan, .between Chicago and La Salle, 111. 

 (1848), and the system of locks about the 

 rapids of the Saint Mary's River, known as the 

 Sault Sainte Marie Canal (1855). The Henne- 

 pin, or Illinois and Mississippi, Canal, extend- 

 ing from the Illinois River near Hennepin to 

 the Mississippi near Rock Island, was begun 

 in 1892 and completed in 1908, but it was 

 almost the only boat canal started during the 

 period between the close of the war and the 

 beginning of the twentieth century. The above 

 canals are described in these volumes under 

 their respective titles. 



Since 1900 there have been constructed a 

 third great lock (the Davis) on the Sault 

 Sainte Marie Canal, and a ship canal across 

 Cape Cod, connecting Buzzard's and Barnstable 

 bays; both of these projects were completed 

 in 1914. The latter was financed by a private 

 corporation. The new lock at Sault Sainte Ma- 

 rie is the largest in the world, 1,350 feet long 

 between gates, 80 feet wide and 24.5 feet deep. 

 The construction of a fourth lock of similar 

 dimensions has been authorized by Congress, 

 and work on this was well under way by the 

 end of 1915. 



Other projects completed in 1915 were the 

 Lake Washington Canal extending from Puget 



Sound to Lake Washington; and the Dalles- 

 Celilo Canal, around the Dalles Rapids, which 

 opens the Columbia River to light-draft boats 

 up stream as far as Priest Rapids, and to Lewis- 

 ton, on the Snake River, in Idaho. Work also 

 progressed on the Ohio River project, which, 

 when completed, will provide a navigable water- 

 way from Pittsburgh to Cairo, 111. Up to 1915 

 thirty-one out of the fifty-three proposed 

 locks and dams had been finished or were 

 under construction. Extensive improvements 

 have also been made on the Louisville and 

 Portland Canal around the falls of the Ohio. 

 In the same year, 1915, the Illinois legislature 

 passed a bill providing for the construction of 

 a canal between Joliet and Utica, a distance 

 of sixty-five miles, and a new canal board was 

 appointed by the governor of Pennsylvania to 

 complete estimates for a proposed canal be- 

 tween the Pittsburgh district and Lake Erie. 

 In 1917 all sections of the New York Barge 



CLIMBING A HILL 



Here are four locks which show very clearly the 

 way in which a steamer is lifted from one canal 

 level to another. At the start the water in the 

 first lock was at the same level as that in the fore- 

 ground ; the boat steamed into it, the gates were 

 closed, and the lock was filled with water from 

 great pipes which enter it at the bottom. This 

 brought the level of the water in the first lock 

 even with that in the second, and the steamer is 

 now entering the second lock. In coming down 

 hill the process would be reversed. 



Canal were ready for service, so the first two 

 decades of the twentieth century have a very 

 creditable record in the matter of canal building. 

 To the United States also is due the honor 

 of completing a project that has held the inter- 

 est of the nations for centuries the great cut 

 across the isthmus that joins the two American 

 continents. The Panama Canal, opened the 

 same year as the Cape Cod Canal and the new 

 Davis lock, is accessible to all countries on an 



