The Erie Canal began as the vision of a man sitting in debtor’s prison. In 1807, Jesse Hawley, a bankrupt flour merchant, wrote a series of essays from his jail cell describing a plan to connect the Great Lakes to the Hudson River. 

His idea reached powerful leaders, including DeWitt Clinton, who served as Governor of New York and became the driving force behind the project. Hawley was released from prison in 1808, and his writings helped set the canal in motion.

Construction began in 1817 and relied on thousands of laborers working with picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows. Much of the workforce was made up of Irish immigrants who dug the canal largely by hand through swamps, forests, and rocky terrain. 

When it opened in 1825, the canal transformed New York into a commercial powerhouse and changed the future of American trade.