Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 14).djvu/139

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
PLANNING, BUILDING, AND OPENING
135

The contracts for this route were let in 1821, eighty miles being let in contracts. The fifty miles between the Genesee and Seneca were completed this year. Business was more brisk on the completed Middle Section than in the year previous, the tolls received amounting to $23,001.63. Contracts were let for the entire completion of the Eastern Section, and boats were already running from Utica to Little Falls. A large fraction of the excavating between Little Falls and Schenectady had been completed by the last of the year, and the difficult problem of a route from Cohoes Falls to Albany was now solved by Canvass White by crossing the Mohawk.

By June, 1823, the canal was open from Rochester to Schenectady, and when the season opened 220 miles were navigable. During 1822 all but ten miles of the route along the Niagara River had been put under contract and the great Genesee aqueduct had been erected. Toll to the extent of $3,286 was collected in this year on the eastern part of the Western Section—at Lyons, Palmyra, and Rochester. By the middle of November water had been ad-