Expedition and Survey To Determine The Best Route
In June 1810, the commissioners were prepared to head west to survey the land to determine a possible route for their canal. Though Gouverneur Morris was President of the Commission, the title was mainly ceremonial because all the members looked to DeWitt Clinton for leadership. All of the members except Van Rensselaer and Morris, who traversed the whole state by carriage, traveled up the Mohawk River and as far west as possible by water, where they met two amateur surveyors, James Geddes and Benjamin Wright. From there, they traveled the final one hundred miles from Lake Seneca to Lake Erie by carriage. DeWitt Clinton kept a journal for the entire journey, in which he closely documented their adventures.
After much deliberation, the Commission turned their findings into a report that they submitted in March 1811. Rejecting Porter’s ideas of running the canal either to Lake Ontario, or through his lands to Lake Erie, the commissioners decided that the canal had to run straight to Lake Erie. Otherwise, the St. Lawrence River would still be a primary route of transportation and the West would not be connected to the East. They also rejected Morris’s proposition of a natural waterway created by the overflow of Lake Erie in favor of an entirely artificial waterway. The final and most important section of the report demanded public financing and control of the canal by the State of New York. Citing past failures such as Eddy’s company, and George Washington’s Patowmack Company, the Commission stated that such large endeavors were too expensive for private financing.
Read more about this topic: Erie Canal Commission
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