The original canal had 83 different hand-operated locks

The Erie Canal remains open to modern boaters

Nearly two centuries after its completion, the Erie Canal is still navigable. Each year, thousands of recreational vessels traverse its 339 miles of waterways—passing through historic towns, beautiful scenery, and restored locks.

The Erie Canal runs 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo

Mostly using the low elevations of the Mohawk River Valley, the canal project connected the Great Lakes to the Atlantic seaboard for the first time. This site has a series of old and new maps of the canal.

The canal became the first use of lock-and-lake system at a massive scale

The system centered around Gatun Lake, the largest human-made reservoir at the time, and two massive concrete locks that helped raise the ships 85 feet from sea level to the lake surface. The excavation was also the largest earth-moving project at the time, moving 240 million cubic yards of soil.

The Erie Canal was opened Oct. 25, 1825, with a group of boats from Buffalo to NYC

The unlikely engineering project connecting the Midwest to the Atlantic saw a ceremonious opening as Governor Dewitt Clinton rode with a flotilla of boats from Buffalo on Lake Erie to New York City.

Reflections on the Erie Canal’s 200-year history

Reflections on the Erie Canal traces the waterway from its 1825 opening to its evolving role today. Each short video in this 10-part series explores a different aspect of the canal and its legacy today.

Explore the technical side of the Erie Canal

Listen to this podcast from Northwestern University exploring the canal’s groundbreaking infrastructure—from locks and aqueducts to its role as America’s first large-scale engineered waterway.

The Erie Canal reduced freight costs by 90%

Before the canal, shipping goods overland cost about $100 per ton. After its completion in 1825, rates fell to just $10—making western farm products competitive in eastern markets for the first time.

Roughly 25,000 workers died building the canal

For each mile of canal that was built, 500 workers lost their lives. The threats came from multiple fronts: mudslides, floods, earthquakes and disease-carrying mosquitoes. Workplace accidents became so common that artificial limb manufacturers competed for contracts with the canal builders.

The canal carried germs as well as goods

In 1832, North America’s first cholera epidemic spread inland by way of the Erie Canal, carried by immigrants arriving on ships. Fearful towns barred passengers from disembarking, yet cholera, smallpox, and other diseases still traveled the waterway.

Erie Canal builders invented the “stump puller” to clear forests

One ingenious device created for the Erie Canal was the stump puller—a horse-powered machine using levers and chains to rip tree stumps from the ground.

Local limestone made waterproof cement for the Erie Canal

In 1818, engineer Canvass White discovered that limestone near Chittenango, New York, could be processed into hydraulic (or waterproof) cement. This breakthrough replaced costly European imports, enabling watertight locks and aqueducts and revolutionizing American construction.

Thomas Jefferson dismissed the Erie Canal as 'little short of madness'

When first proposed, President Jefferson scoffed at the idea of carving a 363-mile waterway through wilderness and rock. With no precedent in American engineering, the canal seemed impossible.

Before dynamite was invented, Erie Canal builders blasted rock with gunpowder

Constructed decades before the invention of dynamite, the Erie Canal’s toughest obstacles were blasted through using black powder charges.

Water from four Great Lakes feeds Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls is powered by water from Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie. The Great Lakes basin spans over 260,000 square miles and holds nearly 20% of the world's surface freshwater—about two-thirds of which passes over the falls.

The ancient Egyptians built prototypes of the modern Suez Canal

The idea to facilitate trade between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea and connect the Eurasian continent was apparent even to pharaohs in the second millennium BCE. Though no physical traces remain, contemporary accounts attest to early, shorter versions of the canal, including from Herodotus.

The National Mall's oldest building is the Lockkeeper's House

Built in 1837, the Lockkeeper's House is the oldest structure on the National Mall. It once served the lockkeeper of the Washington City Canal and of an extension of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, part of early plans to bring commercial waterways into the capital.

The fish doorbell letting people help spawning fish

Utrecht, a city in central Netherlands, has implemented an innovative "fish doorbell" system at a river lock to assist migrating fish during their spring journey to spawning areas. This unique setup allows online viewers to participate in helping fish navigate through the locks. An underwater camera is installed at the Weerdsluis lock, streaming live video to a dedicated website, where viewers may press a digital button when they see a fish.

See the real-time numbers of ships traversing the canal each day

This platform uses satellite data to track chokepoints and trade disruptions along the shipping lanes that crisscross the globe. Search for data from more than 1,600 ports, or run the climate scenario simulator.

The aqueducts and cisterns of Constantinople

The system of aqueducts that supplied Byzantine Constantinople with water had more than 500 kilometers of channels. These channels fed hundreds of cisterns. The largest were open pools (one, now drained, houses an entire modern shopping center); but the most impressive were vast covered chambers like the Basilica Cistern, still a highlight of any visit to Istanbul.

Why Amsterdam looks so unique

The Netherlands' capital consists of concentric canals lined with towering, unusually thin row homes, an altogether unique profile in Europe and the world. When it was growing, the city was a key trade hub, and merchants wanted direct access to waterways. Canals were built like roads, and houses were required to be very thin to allow for more homes to line the canals.

The Channel Tunnel consists of an underwater network of over 200 kilometers in length

The passage beneath the English Channel between England and France includes three tunnels, crossover chambers, emergency passages, and air ducts. Burrowing teams in either country consistently checked their coordinates to ensure they would meet within two centimeters of each other.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

Windmills can be designed to pump groundwater for irrigation or land drainage

A gearbox within the windmill converts the windmill's rotation into the vertical motion of a piston that pushes water up a pipe. It also drives the rotation of an Archimedes screw to move water to higher elevations.

Greek-Egyptian scientist Heron invented automatic doors for a temple

The doors opened when a fire was lit in front of the temple, causing heat and pressure to build in a nearby vessel that would force its contents into a higher secondary vessel. This secondary vessel would lower, pulling the doors open. When the fire extinguished, the pressure and liquid in the vessel would reverse course, closing the temple doors.

Watch how the Enigma machine encrypts messages and learn about its critical design flaw

Using settings selected from a series of rotors and a plugboard that let operators swap letters with any of their choosing, the machine lit up the output letter for each letter typed. While this system could generate messages requiring any of 150 quintillion potential keys, the machine's reflector never encrypted a letter as itself, providing an entry point for exploiting the system.

Thousands of quarters and huge water bills: the economics of laundromats

There are approximately 30,000 laundromats in the US, serving the roughly 50% of apartment dwellers who do not have a washer or dryer. Shops profit when they can get their machines—roughly 30 to 40 per location, on average—to wash eight to 10 loads a day. Connections with commercial vendors help.

In 1915, workers recovered a submarine-like vessel from the Chicago River, prompting fears of German espionage

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

Some coin denominations have ridges etched on their sides, partly to prevent counterfeiting, in a practice called 'reeding.'

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

The Great Salt Lake's distinct dual coloration results from high-salinity organisms that only live in the northern portion and produce a purple protein.

Budweiser stores yeast derived from the original 1800s strain in a secret bunker, which only the Head of Yeast Management can access—not even the CEO

A pickleball's loud 'pop' sound can reach 120 decibels, which is equivalent to a hammer hitting a nail

The boiling temperature of water decreases with increasing elevation because the molecules need less energy to overcome the lower atmospheric pressure associated with thinner air.

This real-time tracking of the hantavirus cruise ship outbreak in May 2026 offers a unique glimpse into the global reach of the outbreak and whether the virus sickened passengers and their communities around the world.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

Walt Disney's early film 'Alice's Wonderland' was a groundbreaking innovation in the silent film era

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

In 1984, Operation Smash Hit intentionally crashed a 239-ton train into a nuclear waste canister at 100 miles per hour to prove the canister's safety, which remained completely intact and lost just 0.29 of its 100 pounds of pressure.

Elk Cloner, the first computer virus to spread in public, was written as a practical joke by Richard Skrenta, a Pittsburgh high school student.

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.

Sears sold DIY house kits starting at $600 in its famous catalog from 1908 through the 1940s, resulting in roughly 10,000 'Sears and Roebuck houses' being built.

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

Before the current East Wing ballroom project, only two White House renovations in the past 100 years cost more than $10M.

Planarian flatworms are small, aquatic worms with exceptional regenerative capabilities. When cut, the worms can regenerate multiple bodies in a matter of weeks.

Watch this video that uses Lego bricks to explain how venture capital works.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

The price of gas is a composite made up of several different factors, with the federal gas tax making up less than 20% of what drivers pay at the pump.