Before the steam engine.

Before the Industrial Revolution, when the only source of power came from one's own hand and mind.

A group of upstate New York pioneers engineered and built the world's longest hand dug canal.

Most of these country folk had never even seen a canal.

The idea of a nearly bankrupt New York, low on professional resources, building a canal that would require massive amounts of engineering, was considered impossible by the federal government and neighboring states.

It would be the first and greatest public works project in American history.

Defining the moment a young United States became a driving force in global trade.

How did this happen?

(Film projector sounds) (Loon calls) Upstate New York in the late 18th century.

(Native American flute) Home to the Native American League of Haudenosaunee, And a handful of European descendent pioneers.

Two groups of people who saw the land around them very differently.

To the Native Americans, the land and all living things are parts of a broad circle of life.

They believe they are borrowing the earth from their children's children, and it is their duty to protect it and the culture for future generations.

(soft music with female vocals) The European settlers saw the land as an untapped resource provided by God.

Certain topographical features were interpreted by the pioneers as a clear sign to civilize the savage wilderness.

The Haudenosaunee, a powerful alliance of upstate New York Native Americans were considered an impediment to the efforts of an expanding nation.

Today, remnants of the early Erie Canal remind us of this transformational era.

(Upbeat electronic music) Currently, the canal provides both transportation, and recreation.

(Upbeat electronic music) How this canal changed America's social, political, and economic landscape is legendary.

The story of the canal's construction by a workforce woefully lacking the required engineering experience.

But heavily equipped with a belief in their own abilities and their destiny, is no less significant.

Following the American Revolution, the economically depleted United States desperately needed to generate income from trade.

Most citizens believed the young nation's destiny lay in the fertile lands to the west of the Appalachian Mountains.

The problem was finding an efficient way to get people and freight across this natural barrier.

The Haudenosaunee had been utilizing the Mohawk Valley and a series of interconnecting rivers and lakes for trade and transportation, long before any Europeans arrival.

It was clear to most New Yorkers looking to go west, the Mohawk Valley was the only natural gateway.

Many believed God had created the valley specifically for the settlers to utilize.

The idea of a canal connecting the Hudson River with Lake Erie had been bantered about in newspapers, and conversations for years.

It wasn't until two upstate New York Assemblymen, Benjamin Wright and Joshua Forman, presented a bill to the legislature to fund an exploratory survey for the canal, that a plan was put into motion.

But what New York created was a commission to study which routes might be the best.

Most politicians believed that the task was beyond the ability of the young nation's citizens.

Regardless of the route chosen, it would be the longest hand dug canal in the world.

Skepticism was rampant, including the Federal government.

It is a little short of madness.

It would fall on the upstate New York pioneers to figure out how to do it.

Who were these people?

Dutch, English, Welsh descendants trying to eke out a living off the land.

They worshiped a Christian God and believed hard work brought prosperity.

They came to upstate looking for prospects From these ranks a few exceptional individuals rose to accomplish the civil engineering feat of the century.

All exemplify what can only be called the pioneer ethos, that hard work and consistent effort will overcome most obstacles.

The first step in building a canal was figuring out the best route for it.

The State ordered Surveyor General Simeon DeWitt to have a route surveyed that utilized Lake Ontario.

I was hired by the Surveyor General in 1808 to conduct a survey of the Lake Ontario route, and if any of the $600 remained, which was unlikely, to work on an interior route.

He at age 30, went up to the area that became Syracuse to turn out salt.

He also became a leader in the community that was growing up around him.

After completing the required survey, I set out again alone, to explore the inland route possibility.

(Crow sounds) He went out alone in early December, because he just had to get a look at that land through there.

(Footsteps in snow, crow sounds) (Pensive piano music) Just east of the Genesee River it was supposed to be a very high plateau, which would make it impossible to run a canal through.

I discovered a singular brook which divided between Oswego and a Irondequoit Bay.

(Water rushing) Leveling from this point, I discovered that it was about 36ft lower than the Genesee River, above the falls, disproving the assumption that high land existed between these two points.

What he then saw was that the valley was too low to run a canal, and the canal would.... canal would dip down into this valley and have no way to get up out of the valley further to the east.

After leveling farther up the valley, Geddes found a series of natural ridges.

Those ridges, along the top of which the canals carried, are in many places of just sufficient height and width for its support.

And that was really the big discovery that proved to the early supporters of an Erie Canal that it would be that there was a it would be possible to build it in all the sections.

(Grand music) The ridges in the Irondequoit Valley, were viewed by many New York residents as a signal from the Almighty that the canal should pass through there.

The Haudenosaunee also believed that their creator had provided the land, water, and animals for them to utilize, but they were borrowing them from future generations and must only use what they needed to survive.

In 1810, based on James Geddes's initial survey, the state legislature appropriated further funds to finalize a canal route.

The first and most important task was to find the longest lines of level ground.

Very wisely, the Canal Commissioners and the lead engineers conceived of the canal as being built in three sections.

To me, that's one of the wisest things they did.

On July 1st, 1816, three survey crews set out on a grueling, months long journey across the unmapped land to find the longest lines of level ground.

James Geddes was given the Western Division.

Benjamin Wright, the middle section, and Charles Broadhead, the eastern section.

They each assembled 13 man teams, with Wright's crew containing his 15 year old son and his son's 40 year old math teacher Nathan Roberts.

As can be expected, the teams often had to abandon one line as it rose or fell, then backtrack to the previous level and proceed in a different direction.

(Guitar strumming) These surveys identified the bulk of the proposed canal route.

Roll call vote.

Mr.

Babcock.

Yeah.

So on April 15th, 1817, the New York State Legislature finally approved construction of the Erie Canal.

The bill authorized $7 million for construction of the 363 mile long waterway, which was to be 40ft wide and four feet deep.

The only problem was they had no qualified engineer to supervise the project.

In a scramble to find a canal engineer with the requisite qualifications, the state offered the well known English canal engineer William Weston the job, but he declined.

At that point, the Canal Commissioners discontinued their search for experienced engineers and appointed James Geddes Benjamin Wright, and Charles Broadhead as the principal engineers.

Geddes and Wright had worked together on some small locks on the Mohawk River, but had no experience on a project of this magnitude.

This was to be the longest hand dug canal in the world.

It would cross swamps, climb a cliff, and require numerous masonry locks, aqueducts, culverts, and dams.

Some of the Canal Commissioners and the State Assembly expressed uneasy feelings about these appointments.

Their concerns were justified.

Who is this Benjamin Wright?

Who is this James Geddes?

What engineering works have they done?

The only answer to that question was none.

There was no civil engineering education in the country at the time.

Canal engineers were required to measure elevations with a precision of inches over dozens of miles.

The commissioner said, listen guys, can you handle this?

You know, is this is this project going to be a total, a total, mess?

Wright and Geddes met with the commissioners.

And there's no record of exactly what was said.

But Geddes and Wright essentially somehow convinced the Canal Commissioners that, that they can handle it.

And, ultimately, they did, much better than anyone really could have imagined.

Rome, New York was the chosen location to begin excavation of the canal.

On July 4th, 1817, a cannon boomed across the lands in Rome, New York, at dawn, marking the ceremonial start to constructing the world's longest hand dug canal.

We happen to be standing just about where the Erie Canal was started July 4th, 1817.

2000 people from town showed up, and Canal Commissioner, Young, was there...the highest dignitary and, we would assume Benjamin Wright, the engineer and the contractor, Richardson, who actually was going to do the digging.

They decided to make the middle section first, which is smart.

It was relatively level land and could be built easily just by digging.

You know, from Utica to Syracuse was flat, and it's easy digging.

Contractors really didn't know what they were doing In some ways, they had to figure out the engineering and how to mobilize all the guys to dig.

So they started where it was easy.

And with the success of that middle section, people would see it that, okay, this thing is possible.

That they had no idea that it would make New York the Empire State or it's transformative, as it was for the whole nation.

The Canal Commission decided to hire out construction of the canal to independent contractors.

In the first years, these were the locals who lived close to where the canal was passing through.

Farmers, merchants, carpenters, masons, most of whom had never seen a canal were doing the actual construction.

The state's engineers would oversee their work.

Contracts were for small sections less than a mile long.

You'd have all these contractors involved in each section doing everything from land clearing to earthwork to masonry work.

They were just kind of feeling out how their contracting would work and how to mobilize large groups of people because they weren't used to it, you know, and it was a big undertaking.

On practically all of the first section, the first series of of contracts.

The only bidders were the farmers whose, whose land was bisected by the, the intended canal.

And it was a farmer and his, you know, his three tall sons.

(Guitar strumming softly) The whole project hangs upon an attenuated thread which will break and cause our destruction if we do not exercise the utmost care, caution and vigilance.

Contractors were not to be paid until the job was completed.

If all work progressed in order, the contractor received weekly advancements in pay.

If there was any deception in the work, the advancements ceased.

In the first two years of construction, 40% of the contractors were unable to finish their sections.

The engineers soon realized they had to make adjustments to the contract's price as unforeseen circumstances developed.

Weather played a major factor.

Unprecedented rains caused massive flooding in the first summer of excavation.

The Mohawk River actually reversed direction.

Emergency dams and culverts had to be constructed in an effort to save the existing work.

In 1816, the year before construction began, an equally severe drought affected the area, dropping the water level in streams and lakes.

These extraordinary weather events were reported by the Canal Commissioners as signals from the Divine, giving evidence to the extreme water levels the canal must be engineered for.

(Soft electronic music) We're cutting a ditch through the gravel, through the grave across the state, Damn it!

We're cutting the ditch through the ground so the people and freight, they may travel.

Can travel across the state by God.

Can travel across the state.

The engineers of the project were gaining confidence that they could actually build this monumental canal, and began to ponder how it would transform a young nation and create a legacy.

The achievement of the magnificent Canal Enterprise would seem, in no partial degree, to emulate the bounty of heaven itself, which showers and benedictions upon all states and kingdoms.

(Soft guitar music) Hey ya, Hey ya (chanting).

While the Canal commissioners and engineers prophesized how their monumental work would be viewed in the future, the Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga peoples living on the Buffalo Creek Reservation contemplated a very different future.

The Treaty of Big Tree signed away the Seneca's rights to all their territory west of the Genesee River, except for 12 small tracts of land, including the Buffalo Creek Reservation, which was located at the future terminus of the Erie Canal on Lake Erie.

In 1817, around 700 Native Americans occupied this refuge, where the social order declined as life on the reservation precluded exercising their traditional activities.

Much further east of Buffalo Creek, on the long level from Rome to Seneca, survey crews worked ahead of the contractors, laying out with stakes, the area to be cleared and dug.

One of the axe men clearing for the surveyors was 22 year old John Jervis, who had walked off his father's farm in Rome, New York, eager for any opportunity.

The Jervis family and the Wright family were very close in Rome.

John was much younger, and so Wright brought him in to be an axe man with one of the survey crews.

Jervis arose from being, a simple ax man to being a supervising engineer on one of the sections.

There's a remarkable story.

His published writings gives insight into what the work was like.

"We had no experience at cutting lines for such a purpose.

The cedar brush was very thick and the ground was very soft.

And to keep on line was a thing we have not practiced.

Though my occupation in this service was that of an ax man.

I had not proceeded long before my attention was attracted to the operations of the men, using the instruments.

(Chopping sounds) (Ascending orchestral music) TIMBER!!

Excavation in the early stages was pick and shovel.

Shovel into a wheelbarrow.

Wheelbarrow would then go and dump it into a donkey cart and then haul it away.

They soon discovered that they could bring in a horse drawn plow to break up the material, and then shovel that and haul it.

"My name is Alexander Willson from Herkimer.

What do I do?

I run a plow and scrape.

The best part?

Getting paid!

I hate mud....hate it!"

As work progressed, innovative devices were invented to increase efficiency.

Stump pullers and tree fellers utilized basic mechanical advantages.

When the ridge sections were contracted for their entire extent lay through an unsettled wilderness.

Very heavily timber.

It was not, therefore, without great difficulty at first, that the contractors erected their houses for shelter, opened roads for delivery of their provisions and tools, and collected their hands.

Once construction had begun, a few of the surveys completed by Wright and Geddes proved inaccurate, again bringing up doubt as to their abilities.

The Canal Commissioners sent Geddes back out to check the all important long level between Rome and Salina.

But this time in a circuitous route twice the distance of the direct route.

His test level, and the level already established, differed by less than an inch and a half.

This proved once and for all the accuracy of their work.

By the end of the first work season, about a thousand men had completed 15 miles of the 360 mile length of the canal.

One problem facing the engineers yet to be addressed was the development of a cement that would cure underwater.

This was fundamental for the building of the masonry lock chambers, but since there were no locks on the first section to be built, it was of little immediate concern until a math teacher forced the issue.

Nathan Roberts was 40 years old when he was hired to work on the Canal.

An itinerant math teacher in Rome, New York, His abilities came to the attention of Benjamin Wright, whose children Roberts had tutored.

Roberts background in math served him well in understanding the concepts of surveying.

In 1818, he was put in charge of a crew of 12 to finalize the line from Salina to the Seneca River.

The original plan was to cross a swamp west of Syracuse by building an embankment.

Roberts found another path that didn't require the labor intensive embankment, but would necessitate four additional locks.

The imminent construction of these locks pressed the Canal commissioners to seek a formula for cement that cured underwater.

Benjamin Wright and procurement chief Andrew Bartow set out to solve the problem.

They knew the cost of importing Welsh lime from Wales, as their only working formula required, was prohibitively expensive.

They had to find a similar type of limestone locally.

While searching quarries in central New York, they discovered a similar limestone at Nichols Furnace in Onondaga Hill.

The limestone required a specialized process of pulverizing and heating to give it the required properties to cure in water.

Bartow spent months trying different techniques with no success.

Then one day, as if by magic, the cement mixture cured under water, he had cracked the code and a key obstacle was overcome to building the masonry locks.

When Nathan Roberts' survey crew completed the final line to the Seneca River, the young John Jervis got his first promotion.

He, was a naturally inquisitive guy.

He had, very little education and, could process information quickly.

In the off season, Jervis had been studying books on surveying, which was now paying off.

He was assigned to be a target man on a crew headed by ex-divinity student David Bates.

Bates soon realized Jervis's expertise in leveling exceeded his own.

So, working together on the calculations, they both gained valuable experience.

By the end of 1818, over 3000 men had completed 46 non-connected miles of the canal.

The western end of the middle section required that work be done in the Montezuma Swamp.

The workforce consisted mostly of immigrants.

They're standing in the mud, wearing nothing but a shirt, and their burning buckets of like leaves and and to keep the mosquitoes away.

Shoveling slick mud out of a trench that would often refill was troublesome work.

Progress all but ceased when thousands became sick from mosquitoes carrying malaria.

It fell upon the local inhabitants to nurse the stricken workers back to health.

The women of the area were called upon to tend to the sick.

Perhaps one woman's reaction could have been like this.

I housed and fed nine canal workers for six months.

They were decent enough folk, though it was a lot of cooking and cleaning.

They had nowhere else to live.

We came from Schenectady and opened a small store.

It really is a wilderness out here.

The workers need everything.

My lord.

I have never seen anything like it.

The house was full of them all touched with the fever, moaning, screaming, seeing things that weren't there.

Any real progress in the Montezuma Swamp was made after the summer months, when the mosquitoes left and the mucky ground firmed up.

To celebrate three years of relatively successful construction and gain the public support for the project, Governor Clinton and the Canal Commissioners organized the first transit of a small section of the canal between Rome and Utica.

And to celebrate the first canal boat, the first Erie Canal boat was built in Rome and was launched in Rome.

The "Chief Engineer" it was called, from Rome to Utica a relatively short run of about 15 or 20 miles or so.

Built in Rome, the "Chief Engineer's" first transit to Utica came to an abrupt stop when a section of the canal wall leaked, dropping the water level to one foot and grounding the boat in the middle of the night.

The engineers and contractors quickly devised a repair.

And by midday the boat was on its way again.

Leaking was to become a constant battle, the entire length of the canal.

The section that John Jervis was working on, comprising 34 miles, had to be entirely drained and re-lined with clay.

In 1821, the entire eastern section to Little Falls was completed.

The excavation of this artificial river across the landscape of New York metaphorically scribed the vast cultural gaps between the Haudenosaunee and the settler pioneers.

Just as the European descendants struggled to make the land conform to their needs, the Native Americans struggled to hold on to their way of life.

Both believed they were being guided by divine spirits To the Haudenosaunee the land was sacred, with spiritual significance tied to specific places like rivers, mountains and forests.

The New York citizens viewed the land as a commodity to be claimed, owned, and cultivated.

The outcome of these conflicting beliefs became increasingly apparent as progress on the canal continued.

In the 1821 season.

5000 laborers were working on the Eastern Line from Utica to Schenectady.

Among these were the first of the Irish immigrants arriving via New York City.

Sure, there were setbacks.

Lock one collapsed a week after opening.

We always figured something out.

$12 a month plus room and board.

Of course I took it.

I spent five years blasting rock from the deep cut in Mountain Ridge.

It was the biggest mistake of my life.

I lost everything.

I never thought we could finish it.

My advice... ...never underestimate the force of water, earth and stone or upstate New Yorkers.

(music lyrics) "I've been American dreamin Oh, I'm American, dreaming Whoa, whoa.

I'm American dreaming.

Whoa, whoa.

But I never seem to get no rest.

Like so many other engineers on the canal.

David Bates rose through the ranks of the survey crews to be in charge of some of the greatest challenges the canal's construction would face.

This included the canal's largest masonry structure, an 800ft aqueduct across the mighty Genesee River.

In the summer of 1821, the first contractor had only completed a culvert, and the first abutment.

The winter weather washed these attempts away.

The next season, under a new contractor, they blasted holes several feet thick into the riverbed to recess the footings.

As for the type of stone to be used on the aqueduct, Benjamin Wright wrote David Bates, "Pay great attention to the construction.

It is a great work and any defect in it would ruin yourself as well as me."

They selected red sandstone from a nearby gorge and quarried 13,500yd3 of it, with individual stones weighing several tons.

It was a massive operation to haul the material three miles to the work site.

The construction method used by the masons hadn't changed in thousands of years.

By the end of 1822, the piers up to the top of the arches were completed, and in 1823 the entire span was finalized.

At the aqueducts opening celebration, it was hailed as the most stupendous and strongest work in America.

But all was not as it seemed.

For the red sandstone would proved too soft, and the entire structure soon started to crumble.

Within 19 years it was entirely replaced.

By 1822, 120 miles of the canal from Little Falls to Syracuse was opened, and actively moving cargo.

Foreshadowing the future, wheat was now shipping for a dollar a mile, one tenth of the price by land.

The success of the eastern section of the canal proved important, as the engineers had their toughest challenges ahead.

In the western section, James Geddes had surveyed and laid out the western route, which had the canal climbing a gorge crossing 70ft above a valley, and cutting a deep trough through three miles of limestone.

Having been transferred to oversee the Champlain Canal construction, it would be up to David Bates and Benjamin Wright to implement Geddes' plans.

To keep the canal level crossing the Irondequoit Valley, Geddes envisioned utilizing natural and manmade ridges to carry the canal over the valley floor.

The natural ridges, or eskers sat on soft glacial rubble.

David Bates's plan was to drive 900 wooden pilings into the soft earth as the foundation for the manmade earthen pyramids that would be 70ft high.

Benjamin Wright approved Bates's plan, with emphasis on setting the piles correctly.

There should be no settling, nor any precariousness, as you know, that would destroy all instantly.

Planks were set on the pilings, followed by cart after cart of earth to build up the embankments to meet the existing level of the eskers.

A 245ft long culvert of sandstone had to be erected in one of the embankments to let the Irondequoit Creek pass through it.

A wooden trough was built atop the embankment to carry the water.

Leakage of the other embankments on the eastern section of the canal was a constant problem, and much concern lay in the potentially catastrophic collapse of this much larger embankment.

The great embankment at Irondequoit was not in a condition to admit water so early as had been hoped.

When it was deemed safe.

They let water into the canal atop the embankment, halfway two feet deep, and drained it every night, constantly watching for leaks and patching when necessary.

We took the precaution early last season to carry in clay, to line the bottom and sides to a depth of two feet.

The persistence and precautions of the engineers finally paid off.

By the close of the 1824 season, the Great Embankment was deemed complete and safe.

It is hard to imagine the courage the engineers must have had to even dream they could achieve such a feat.

Today, a sharp eye can still find the eskers.

Steve Myers, a local resident, knows this area well, and has found what appears to be the remains of the actual canal atop one of the eskers.

There's gonna be a section up here.

I would I would argue.

That you might say is the actual, the ditch.

The shape is unmistakable.

Probably the most difficult engineering on the canal was just east of what became Buffalo.

One of the elements that made this section difficult was the Niagara Escarpment, a 70ft high ridge that had to be crossed.

In his 1816 report.

James Geddes identified the most beneficial location to cross the ridge, a natural gorge in what would become the town of Lockport.

A series of contiguous locks would lift and lower the canal across the ridge.

To make those locks work.

They had to have free flowing water.

Water from Lake Erie would flow downhill east for 60 miles before it came to an incline at the Niagara Escarpment.

So they had a deep cut between the staircase locks and the lake.

This deep cut would be five miles long and up to 30ft deep in limestone.

Once clear of the deep cut, the canal would then lock down the escarpment to the level of the Genesee River.

Geddes's original lock design of five connected locks was modified by engineer Nathan Roberts to ten locks, allowing for simultaneous passage of boats headed in opposite directions.

Construction contracts were issued in May of 1821 for the locks and the deep cut.

Nathan Roberts, the math teacher turned surveyor, would be the engineer overseeing this most difficult section.

The first task of the contractors was to build the infrastructure required to transport, house and feed the thousands of workers that would soon descend upon the area.

The dense forest between Lockport and Tonawanda looked like a hurricane passed through it, leaving a narrow belt of fallen timber and excavated stone.

It wasn't until July 1823 that the first stone was laid for construction of the flight of five locks in Lockport.

The Mountain Ridge contractors have not performed as much as we hoped they would.

The first season, they have only completed 6% of the needed excavation.

At this rate, it will take 17 years to complete this one section.

At the deep cut, 1500 men were amassed together.

These were no longer the sons of local farmers, but Irish and Welsh immigrants.

It was dirty, dangerous work.

Whiskey was a driving force.

Fights and brawls were common.

Blasting was just coming in then.

And black powder charges, which were essentially gunpowder, tightly wrapped tightly in, in cloth and inserted into holes drilled in the rocks with hand drills.

Framed buildings and roofs of log buildings are being battered.

Huge piles of stone lay upon the canal.

The stone in the deep cut was harder than previously experienced, so the engineers offered a $100 prize to anyone who could develop a stronger drill bit.

I hammered until my arm ached and my brain rattled.

And they would build a fire on the rock.

Heat the rock up and then quickly cool it with water and let the rock crack.

And then you could either come in with chisels and break it apart, or you could put the black powder down the crack and break it up that way.

Getting all the rock out of the deep cut became increasingly difficult.

The deeper the cut became.

Orange Dibble, a local farmer inventor, devised a horse drawn crane with bucket that proved most successful in removing the rubble.

These cranes were erected on both sides of the cut, spaced evenly for miles.

While the slow and frustrating work on the deep cut and locks at Lockport slugged on, the middle and eastern portions of the canal were open but experiencing problems.

On July 8th, 1824, locked one collapsed in on itself, most likely from being built on a sandy foundation.

This all important lock connecting directly to the Hudson River was closed for months, forcing boats to unload cargo onto horse drawn carts, then reload on the Hudson.

The embankment at German Flats repeatedly collapsed, draining the canal and stopping traffic.

Leaking often occurred at locks, where clay contacted masonry.

All of these problems were directly addressed by the young engineers as a part of their steep learning curve.

By the beginning of the 1825 season, the pace of construction on the deep cut and flight of five locks had significantly increased.

The long level section from Rochester brought water to the foot of the locks at Lockport.

The westerly connection to the Niagara River was finalized, allowing water to flow up to the nearly finished deep cut.

Marking the completion of the flight of five locks, a Masonic ceremony took place on June 24th, with engineer Nathan Roberts placing this ceremonial capstone.

The locks at this place, by which the waters of Lake Erie will descend to the Genesee level, are unquestionably the most important works of the whole line of the canal.

These locks are of the most substantial character, and have a delicacy and neatness of finish.

Highly credible to the honest mechanic, who probably has never been outside of the region, and it is an easy justice doing him to say, whoever he may be, that the world cannot produce superior locks.

We are doing something momentous.

How the canal responds to nature's obstacles, forming by conforming, is the highest expression.

The eyes of an enlightened posterity are on our work.

On October 24th, the gate was raised and water from Lake Erie filled the remainder of the canal.

In October 1825, the canal was largely completed and it was decided to show it off basically with a big parade of boats.

Canal boats from Buffalo to Albany, and then in riverboats down to New York for a big celebration.

The canal's principal engineers, including James Geddes and Benjamin Wright, were among the dignitaries aboard this first canal boat, "Seneca Chief", to transit the entire canal.

As the Erie waters flowed east through the canal, they passed just outside the Haudenashone Reservation in Buffalo Creek.

The ceremonial boat, named after the tribe it was displacing, carried the symbols and thoughts of the changing landscape.

For the Haudenosaunee, it looked like the end.

For all others it was a grand beginning.

One of the boats in the celebration flotilla, "Noah's Ark", carried an assortment of upstate New York animals and two Indian boys in the dress of their nation.

So what we're doing is we're building a replica of a particular boat called the, "Seneca Chief".

The, "Seneca Chief", was the boat that Governor DeWitt Clinton took, to go the length of the Erie Canal in 1825 when they opened the canal.

It was the inaugural trip on the Erie Canal.

In the spirit of the original Erie Canal workers, 200 volunteers spent four years building the, "Seneca Chief", replica.

Look at this thing.

You know, how many people can say I helped build this boat?

(Crowd chattering) (Crowd chatter) Congratulations!

(Soft guitar music) Less than a mile from where the, "Seneca Chief", was built and where it resides today, lies the Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino on land the Seneca Nation was able to reacquire.

It stands as a testament to the resilience and endurance of the Haudenosaunee that they are still here, despite the wrongs done to them.

All right, everybody, low bridge, everybody down.... These volunteers and the boat they've built serve as symbols of the enduring spirit of enterprise and accomplishment that underpins our great Nation.

The Erie Canal's success reached far beyond the imagination of its builders.

Besides the increased trade that transformed New York City into a world class port, it opened the door to immigration to the West.

It spread new ideas and religion and civil rights.

The country surveyors, turned engineers, who designed and built the canal, laid a foundation of skills from which a young nation grew.

Their conduit of knowledge still follows the path of the canal, proving anything is possible, if you put your mind to it.