Description: Front caption reads: "The Miami Canal at Dayton. This photograph was taken when the canals were in their heyday. This shipshape looking boat is tied up before a forwarding station or depot. (Courtesy of the Dayton Chamber of Commerce)." During the late 1810s, Governor Thomas Worthington and Governor Ethan Allen Brown both supported internal improvements, especially canals. Both men believed that Ohioans needed quick and easy access to the Ohio River and to Lake Erie if they were to profit financially. In 1822, the Ohio legislature realized the importance of internal improvements and created a new Ohio Canal Commission. The Canal Commission eventually recommended a route starting at Lake Erie, passing through the Cuyahoga Valley, the Muskingum Valley, the Licking Valley, and then to the Ohio River along the Scioto Valley. The Commission also recommended a western route along the Miami and Maumee Valleys. By 1833, the Ohio and Erie Canal was complete, followed twelve years later by the Miami and Erie Canal. Once completed, thirty-three of Ohio's eighty-eight counties either had portions of canals running through them or quarries to mine rock for construction. The canals had many advantages to Ohioans. Most importantly, the cost to ship goods from the East Coast to Ohio and vice versa declined tremendously from 125 dollars per ton of goods to twenty-five dollars per ton of goods. Most canals remained in operation in Ohio until the late 1800s, their demise due in part to competition from the much speedier railroads. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: SA1039AV_B02F07_003
Subjects: Miami and Erie Canal (Ohio)--History; Boats and Boating; Canals--Ohio--Pictorial works; Ohio--History--Pictorial works; Federal Writers' Project
Places: Dayton (Ohio); Montgomery County (Ohio)