Oct 26, 1825: The Erie Canal opened, and New York became the Empire State. Before the canal, moving goods from the Great Lakes to the East Coast meant hauling them over the Appalachian Mountains by wagon on terrible roads. It was slow and expensive. New York's governor, DeWitt Clinton, pushed a plan to dig a canal 363 miles across the state from Albany on the Hudson River to Buffalo on Lake Erie. People thought he was crazy. Thomas Jefferson reportedly called the idea a little short of madness. Critics called it Clinton's Ditch. Construction started on July 4, 1817. There were almost no trained engineers in America, so the men in charge learned on the job. Thousands of laborers, many of them Irish immigrants, dug most of it by hand with shovels, picks, and horses. They had to build 83 locks to lift and lower boats over the changing ground, including a famous staircase of locks at Lockport. It was finished in eight years. On Oct 26, Clinton boarded a canal boat in Buffalo. Cannons had been placed along the entire route within earshot of each other. As the first one fired, the next one fired, all the way to New York City and back, a relay that took a few hours to cross the state. When Clinton reached New York Harbor nine days later, he poured a keg of water from Lake Erie into the Atlantic Ocean. They called it the Wedding of the Waters. The cost of shipping goods from Buffalo to New York City dropped by around 90%. The canal paid for itself in about a decade. Towns like Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo boomed, and New York City became the biggest port and business center in the country.