Federal Land Grants in Aid of Canals

In the history of federal aid to transportation in the United States the land grants given to assist in the construction of canals have been almost completely overshadowed by the far more munificent land subsidies to the railroads. The disparity between the two is, indeed, striking: the canals received altogether about 4,500,000 acres, as against the approximately 130,000,000 acres which ultimately passed to the railroads. Nevertheless, the importance of the canal grants is not to be judged solely by the amount of land involved. To the extent that they were effective they contributed to the building of waterways, the influence of which on the economic development of the Middle West was considerably greater than is generally appreciated today. The Ohio canals, for example, are credited with stimulating the growth of that state in a way comparable to the impetus given New York by the Erie Canal; the Wabash and Erie Canal in Indiana, chronically insolvent as it was, produced, within ten years of its opening, a fivefold increase in the population of the counties that it traversed; and the historian of the Illinois and Michigan Canal asserts that this waterway “not only transformed a wilderness into a settled and prosperous community, but it made Chicago the metropolis of the Mississippi Valley.” The natural enthusiasm of authors for their subject may require some discounting of these claims, but not enough, in the face of the evidence that is offered to support them, to detract seriously from the significance of the land-grant canals.