Looking like he stepped out of a post card from 1825, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine took to the stage at the Ohio & Erie Canal 200th Anniversary Celebration in Newark on June 28 with a black vest and velvety top hat.
He chose a look that would mimic what a governor might have worn at the 1825 groundbreaking for a piece of a significant development in Ohio’s history.
“It’s amazing artificial intelligence, what you can do,” DeWine said. “So we wanted to see what maybe I would have looked like if I was that governor back then. … This hat was pretty close to what at least artificial intelligence tells us that the hat looked like.”
The 308-mile Ohio & Erie Canal ran north and south through the state – from the Ohio River to Lake Erie. It is difficult to overstate the importance the canal had in opening up Licking County and Ohio to commerce and development and because of how it connected people and communities within the state.
With no decent roads and no railroads in the early 1800s, Newark Mayor Jeff Hall said, the canal made Newark a place to be because of its proximity to the canal, which ran through downtown just south of Courthouse Square.
“Everyone knows the communities were established around waterways because that was the primary local transportation and to move goods and services,” Hall said. “This was a very popular place.”
When railroads came to Newark in the 1850s, they quickly became a more efficient mode of transportation than the plodding canal boats, which were pulled by horses or mules.
But that didn’t diminish the legacy of the canal system, DeWine said.
“Wherever major transportation routes go, lives are changed, and they’re changed forever,” DeWine said. “Ohio, frankly, would not look like it looks today without that period of canal building.”
Boats traveling along the canal moved at approximately four miles an hour. And that is without considering the time it took for the canal boats to pass through “locks.” The stone chambers had gates on each end to control the water level in the chamber, and raising and lowering the boats allowed them to travel over a hill through a series of locks.
But even 4 mph was better than traveling cross-country on foot or by horse, according to Mark Johns, the mayor of Heath, which is also home to a portion of the canal as it made its way south from Newark to Buckeye Lake.
“When completed, the trip from Cincinnati to Cleveland was reduced to about 80 hours of travel time, when it previously would have taken weeks to cover the distance,” Johns said.
Before canals, Ohio shipped about 1,000 barrels of flour a year from Cleveland to Buffalo. With canals, that became 250,000 barrels, Johns said.
Every part of the canal was hand built by laborers paid 30 cents a day, working only with the simple tools and animals such as mules.
“It was hard, back-breaking work to establish canals, arcades – things like that,” Hall said. “And we need to honor those people that did such hard work downtown.”
DeWine noted that it was German and Irish immigrants who performed most of the work on the canal.
“These construction projects brought our immigrants here,” DeWine said. “Those people, you know, work very, very, very hard, and some of us, I’m sure, are direct descendants.”
When the plans for the canal were finalized and the time for the groundbreaking ceremony arrived, it took place in Newark, making it a historic site and an obvious location for the anniversary celebration.
At the original celebration, the speeches lasted a total of six hours. While the 200th anniversary of the canal did not bring back that tradition, local storytellers Jeff Gill and Steven Hughes reenacted parts of the speeches given by the sixth governor of Ohio, Thomas Worthington, and Gov. DeWitt Clinton, the sixth governor of New York.
“It will unite the East and the West, the North and South, by identity of interest, by frequency of communication, and by the ties which can connect human beings in the bonds of friendship and social intercourse, the union of the states will be as firm as the everlasting hills,” Hughes read from Gov. DeWitt Clinton’s original speech.
Howard Long, executive director of the Licking County Historical Society, spent a year and a half planning the anniversary celebration. Long was ecstatic that speakers such as DeWine took the time to be a part of the celebration.
“I can honestly tell you, I remember a county commissioner calling me and saying, so Howard, what are we going to do for the canal event? And I said, ‘Okay, we’ll work on it,’” Long said.
The anniversary event, which was from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., included historical exhibits, crafts for kids, a scavenger hunt, dance performances, canal songs, storytelling and a canal boat contest.
Shortly after all of the speeches and reenactments, author Sarah Harper read her children’s book “Sweet Sorsha: An Ohio Canal Story.”
Harper said she loves to travel Ohio with her family, and she is all about learning local history.
“We discovered that we had a national park for the first time about six years ago,” Harper said, referring to Cuyahoga Valley National Park in northeastern Ohio. “I was curious as to what made it significant, and so I researched it and found the canal history.”
Harper’s first book, “Exploring Ohio Canals,” discusses recipes, music and travel tips all tied to the history of the canal. Her children’s book follows a different story: the story of a canal mule.
“There are six of the scenes from my book and sweet Sorcha are locations that families can visit for free – four of them here in Licking County, also Roscoe village in Coshocton, and Cuyahoga Valley National Park company in Akron,” Harper said.
Long called the anniversary celebration a success and said he was happy with the turn out.
“It was a historical alliance of partners that came together to create what we wanted to be a reenactment of what took place 200 years ago,” Long said.
For those interested in more information about the canal history, the Licking County Historical Society, 5 N. 6th St. in Newark, offers access to those details during its research hours, Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Maddie Luebkert writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.