It was sort of like the Internet of 200 years ago.
Thousands of men wielding shovels took 7.5 years to dig the Erie Canal and when the barges started moving, it greatly increased communication, trade, immigration and knowledge between America’s original 13 colonies and the Great Lakes – and on to the Midwest.
It was 200 years ago in September that the first shovel was plunged into the soil at "the Great Carrying Place" near Rome, New York to start the 584-kilometre-long canal. That site earned


