Progress of Eastern Erie Canal

Lyons Advertiser
Sept. 23, 1822
From the Albany Argus
Erie Canal

We have recently had an opportunity of acquiring some information respecting the progress of the eastern section of this great work, which we presume will be gratifying to our readers. It will be recollected that this section has, for the last and present season, been under the immediate direction and superintendence of Mr. Seymour. The work is prosecuted with great spirit and persevering industry. It is estimated that there are five thousand persons at present engaged in various employments on that section of the canal.

The Schoharie creek is to be crossed by means of a dam. The dangers and delays incident to the construction of such a work had excited much alarm and apprehension. This dam was completely finished last week, and is secured in the most durable and substantial manner; it is more than six hundred feet long, and so perfect has been its construction, that the water falls over it in an even and unbroken sheet.

The early completion of this dam & of the heavy & difficult jobs at the Little and Great Nose, two promontories which present formidable obstacles, together with the forward state of the work in general, give the strongest assurance that the line of the canal will be completed the present year as far eastward as Schenectady.

Great loss has been sustained during the present summer, occasioned by a want of means to transport the produce of the country to market. Large quantities of flour lay exposed to the weather for weeks in succession and the owners had at last to pay from ten to twelve shillings per barrel, to have it carried from the Little falls to this city. If the canal, at the opening of this season, had been completed to Schenectady, it is estimated that there would have been a saving to the proprietors, in the transportation of the single article of flour for this year alone, the enormous sum of one hundred thousand dollars.

The amount of toll for the present year, will greatly exceed what was estimated in the last year’s report.