— Malcolm Harristhe Erie Canal right down the road. The canal connected New York State (and thereby New York City) to frontier settlements in the Midwest via a navigable waterway that ran through the western part of the state. It made New York City the premier commercial port of North America’s East Coast, surpassing Boston and Philadelphia.
Replicated under Fair Use from Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris.