Canal Basin
Erie, Erie County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
End of Erie Extension of the Pennsylvania Canal system. Work begun here July 4, 1838. Canal formally opened Dec. 5, 1844, by arrival of "R.S. Reed" with Mercer County coal, and "Queen of the West" with passengers.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the canal-building fever of the 1830s and '40s, Pennsylvania stitched together a statewide system of waterways to move coal, freight, and passengers before the railroads took over. This basin marked the northern terminus of the Erie Extension, whose ground was broken on Independence Day 1838 and which finally opened in December 1844 when the R.S. Reed arrived carrying Mercer County coal and the Queen of the West brought passengers. For a few decades, boats bound for Lake Erie ended their journey right here.
Why it matters
The Erie Extension linked Pennsylvania's interior to the Great Lakes, part of the canal era that knit together a young nation's economy just before rail rendered it obsolete.
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Related events
- · Opening of the Erie Extension Canal, 1844
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
U.S.S. Michigan/Wolverine
Erie, PA · est. 2023
On December 5, 1843, the U.S. Navy launched its first iron-hulled vessel near this Erie shoreline—an experiment in a new material at a moment when wooden ships still ruled the seas. Her iron components were forged in Pittsburgh and hauled overland to the lakeshore, then assembled into a 163-foot steam-powered paddle frigate. Renamed Wolverine in 1905, she patrolled and trained sailors on the Great Lakes into the twentieth century, earning the nickname "Guardian of the Great Lakes."
Erie Extension Canal
Millcreek Township, PA · est. 1948
This stretch of the Erie Extension Canal was part of a system meant to connect New Castle with Erie and the Great Lakes. The Conneaut Line, running from Erie to Conneaut Lake, was begun by the state in 1838 but left unfinished until a private company led by Erie's R.S. Reed completed it in 1843–44. A surviving section of the canal still lies at the foot of the nearby slope.
Erie Extension Canal
Platea, PA · est. 1948
The town now called Platea began life in 1839 as Lockport, named for the remarkable staircase of locks—28 of them packed into just two miles—that stepped canal boats down toward Erie and Lake Erie. The Erie Extension Canal carried traffic here from 1844 until 1871, when the railroad that replaced it was laid partly along the old channel. Traces of that abandoned waterway can still be seen beside the tracks.
Cambridge Springs
Cambridge Springs, PA · est. 2001
For a generation around the turn of the twentieth century, this small Crawford County town was one of Pennsylvania's premier mineral-spring resorts. It began in 1884 when Dr. John H. Gray struck spring water on his farm and started bottling and prescribing it, and within two decades some forty inns and grand hotels—among them the palatial Hotel Rider and the Riverside Inn—drew crowds who arrived by daily passenger train. As medicine moved away from 'taking the waters,' the resort era faded.