Don't forget the other Big Dig

April 24, 2022 6:05 PM

For sheer bravado in engineering, Boston’s central artery project has no precedent. Or does it? Let’s turn back the clock about 200 years before the Big Dig . . .
posted by jenkinsEar (16 comments total)

It's amazing how little of it is visible on Google Maps, at least heading northwest from Boston. We do a good job of hiding our own history.
posted by mollweide at 7:34 PM on April 24, 2022

Engineering in early 19th-century New England, the Middlesex Canal, the founding of Lowell, Massachusetts, and the Baldwin Apple Monument, "the only monument in the world that includes a statue of an apple," means flagged as fantastic, jenkinsEar. Thanks for the introduction to Burlington Retro, "The Website that Forgets to Forget."
posted by Iris Gambol at 7:47 PM on April 24, 2022 [3 favorites]

(I should add: via AdamG's excellent site Universal Hub.)
posted by jenkinsEar at 8:00 PM on April 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

I live in Medford, and used to live on Summer Street. The Canal's route can be seen by the property lines of the backyards on my block.
posted by ocschwar at 8:19 PM on April 24, 2022

^ and at Universal Hub, late 19th-century engineering, Stony Brook: Boston's Stygian river. (A stream running through Jamaica Plain floods and floods, until the Boston Sewer Department makes it part of the city's sewer system.)
posted by Iris Gambol at 8:20 PM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

Canals never really took off in the US, I guess railroads came before many were built - try following come canals in the UK, they built them almost everywhere (same in parts of Europe too)
posted by mbo at 1:04 AM on April 25, 2022

This is really interesting. Thanks.
posted by SoberHighland at 4:10 AM on April 25, 2022

Canals weren't everywhere in the US because it's so large and spread out. But there certainly was a boom of them before the railroads came in. The Erie canal is the most famous, having been completed in 1825, being so long, and bringing goods to New York from the Great Lakes. I grew up near the former Miami & Erie Canal, which connected the Ohio River (and hence the Mississipi, Missouri, etc) to Lake Erie (and hence the Erie canal as well). It was finished in 1845, just before the rails came in (it also had to compete with the Ohio & Erie canal which had been finished in 1832). The heyday of canals in the US was short enough to not leave much of a lasting impression almost 200 years later. But you'll always know your neighbor, you'll always know your pal, if you've ever navigated on the Erie canal.
posted by rikschell at 4:43 AM on April 25, 2022 [7 favorites]

Also mountains.

When Massachusetts wanted to get access to the Eerie Canal, the most viable path to build a canal of their own went right through Hoosac Mountain. Railroads had largely replaced canals by the time enough money and political will could be gathered, and the resulting 4.75mi long tunnel through the mountain was the second longest in the world when it was completed. The Hoosac Tunnel (the "great bore"--what is it with Massachusetts and digging?) is still the longest railroad tunnel east of the Rocky Mountains and the 6th longest in North America.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:09 AM on April 25, 2022 [2 favorites]

It's also my understanding that for a period of time, New England was inconveniently accessible from the rest of the nation because the geography is just frustrating enough to make things difficult. The Berkshires and associated mountain ranges are just tall enough to frustrate railroads and the further south you go to get around them the wider and more annoying the rivers are to cross. Also, if you want to go by ocean, this massive sandbar called Cape Cod just happens to be in the way and the prevailing winds make it more likely that you'll run right into it.

Easy connections were eventually made (Hoosac Tunnel, Cape Cod Canal, Connecticut bridges) but not without cost or delay.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:40 AM on April 25, 2022

Canals are alive and well in the Phoenix area though not for transport of goods I guess.
posted by Tandem Affinity at 6:22 AM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

There is actually a Canal Museum in Pennsylvania, which (in season) has mule-drawn canal boat rides. Washington, DC also still has the C&O Canal, though it has had some maintenance issues over time. They have a new boat and are restarting rides this week, with a celebration on the 28th. I really wish the aqueduct bridge across the Potomac had survived (sigh).
posted by gudrun at 6:38 AM on April 25, 2022 [3 favorites]

Now-dry aqueducts of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal (which was originally planned to extend all the way to the Ohio River in Pittsburgh, but Cumberland, Maryland was a far as they got) still exist. The one at Antietam is quite impressive.
posted by Rash at 8:35 AM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

Thanks for posting this. Exactly the kind of nerdy history I like forward!
posted by rednikki at 11:29 AM on April 25, 2022

The C&O canal has a rather similar story, and still exists today (as a walkable tow path at least) under the control of the Park Service. That thanks primarily to the efforts of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who got the editors of the Washington Post and various other conservationists to walk the towpath with him in 1954, setting off a movement to protect the then defunct canal from being turned into a highway.

As for why canals weren't built more extensively in the early US, I blame the near-fanatical dedication to a poorly thought-out vision displayed by one early American.
posted by Naberius at 12:15 PM on April 25, 2022 [4 favorites]

For context, here is a quick history of navigational canals in the UK. My favorite detail is how they used clay, tramped down by cows, to line the canals so the water in them didn't drain into the ground. Thousands of miles of canals, with just over a thousand locks, were built before the railways superseded them.
posted by Bee'sWing at 2:58 PM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]