Westward Cork Migration by Sail 1815-1860 by John Sutton

PART II EMIGRANT PERSPECTIVE

America’s expanding frontiers offered dangerous jobs for willing hard-working men. Before the highways and roads, so difficult to build and maintain, and before the railways, Irish labor built many of the canals and locks in both BNA and the USA, which were essential to facilitate waterway transportation, bypass obstructions and avoid expensive portages. One portrayal of the benefit of waterway transshipment of cargoes, though a little silly, was the comparative ability of one mule to either carry a 250-pound pack or pull a 60,000-pound barge along a towpath. Two great North American water transportation systems would be developed to expedite shipping and trade: One system opened the Great Lakes (BNA and US) to the Atlantic via the two distinct routes of the St Lawrence River and the Hudson River. The second opened the US American Heartland, via important tributaries such as the Ohio River from the east and the Missouri and Arkansas Rivers from the west to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. Major Canals Built in the 19th Century, American Northeast

Montreal

Ottawa

Kingston

Utica

Oswego

Syracuse

Albany

Boston

Buffalo

Chicago

Erie

Toledo

Cleveland

New York

Johnstown

Harrisburg

Pittsburgh Hollidaysburg

Philadelphia

Columbus

Dayton

Canal

Cumberland

Active Abandoned Early portage railroad

Cincinnati

Washington

Portsmouth

Elevation (feet)

Evansville

Fig. 20. Northeast American Waterways in 19 th century with River-Lake-Canal connections. Important connections between the two waterway systems would be made by canals from Lake Erie to the Ohio River, such as from Cleveland on Lake Erie to Portsmouth on the Ohio, and the canal from Lake Michigan at Chicago to Salisbury township (LaSalle-Peru) on the Illinois River, navigable to the Mississippi River (above). The 17 th century French explorers, Jolliet and Marquette learned of a prehistoric six-mile- long Indian trail, called the Chicago Portage, between the Des Plaines River (a tributary of the Illinois River) and Lake Michigan. This portage, which would later give its name to the City of Chicago, was once the bed of a great river that drained the lake, formed by receding glaciers thousands of years prior, into the Mississippi, before becoming redundant when further ice recession opened the St Lawrence Valley to the east for drainage of the Great Lakes into the Atlantic via the St Lawrence River and Gulf. Richmond Less than 150 150 to 400 400 to 800 More than 800 Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue, Dept. of Global Studies & Geography, Hofstra University.

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