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Canals
Emerging industry needed to move goods, and the solution in the 19th century was to dig canals. New York's Erie Canal changed American business, and new canals were also dug in Great Britain. And on a grand scale, the Suez Canal made passage to India much shorter and inspired people to start thinking about creating a canal to cross Panama.
Albert Gallatin's Report on Roads, Canals, Harbors, and Rivers
Thomas Jefferson's secretary treasury issued a report in 1808 that inspired the age of canal building in America. Albert Gallatin's visionary Report on Roads, Canals, Harbors, and Rivers provided a blueprint for a great national transportation system, making Gallatin the father of American infrastructure projects.
The Erie Canal
New York State's illustrious "Big Ditch," featuring maps, images, articles and even pointers on touring what remains of the waterway that changed commerce in America in the 1820s.