building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

All the works came to the astronomical price of 20,000,000 dollars, which Gallatin
thought to distribute evenly over subsequent years at approximately 2 million per
year. His proposal was turned down and the problem of funding was adapted
according to the scale of individual states, so that his intuitions were considered
applicable only decades later167F167F174
. A very large number of canals were constructed,
however. Thus, even prior to the railroad and turnpikes, the first works to mark the
natural landscape were the water canals, used for transport and to exploit hydraulic
force, as we have seen in the case of Lowell. In the face of a high investment, canals
guaranteed ease and speed of transport. Moreover, they did not require the
continual maintenance needed for normal, unpaved roads, they were not the
ephemeral earthen trails followed by the pioneers and therefore did not carry the
risks of getting lost or of encroaching on Indian Territory.
One of the first to be constructed, together with a network of aqueducts, was the
Middlesex Canal (1803), which became the landmark in the development of
manufacturing in Massachusetts. A towpath was also built, which enabled horses or
men to pull the boats along the banks of the canal, which testified the strength of
the project design and engineering.
However, the most interesting engineering challenge of the early years of the
nineteenth century was the Erie Canal [Figure 76‐80]. Opened in 1825, it linked
Albany on the Hudson River to Lake Erie, via Buffalo, 363 miles (584 km) of
waterway exceeding a total elevation differential of 565 ft (169m). It measured an
average of 40 feet (12 metres) in width and 4 feet (1.2m) in depth.
The internal territories of the State of New York had been assigned in 1781 (Central
New York Military Tract) at the end of the War of Independence as a reward for the
soldiers, who had taken part in the revolution. This was the context, in which place
names of townships were given epithets from classical authors.
Therefore, the way for the “Great Western” had already been opened in three
ways: via the Indian trails, by certain means of transport, which envisaged portage
paths and via the routes of the pioneers and former soldiers. Archer Butler Hulbert,
scholar of American communication routes, highlights the lack of communication
174 See GOODRICH, Carter, Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads 1800‐1890, New
York, Columbia University Press, 1960
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