America's Most Important Forgotten Canal

     While it may not look like much today, this body of water was once one of the most important locations in world history. In the United States in the early 19th Century, American manufacturing companies needed a way to transport massive shipments of raw materials from the western frontiers to factories in the Northeast where people could process those goods then sell them to foreign markets. The problem was that before mass transportation by rail was an option, the only available way yo transport those goods was by ship.

     Shipping goods south along the Mississippi River to New Orleans, then through the Gulf of Mexico and up the Atlantic Coast was a major economic hurdle that resulted in low profits for overseas commerce. The solution was to find a way to ship goods from the frontier (places like Minnesota and Missouri) to New York without ever needing to touch an ocean.

     The solution came when a small city on the southern coast of Lake Michigan established a canal connecting a short river through their town to the larger Illinois River which fed into the Mississippi. The new Illinois & Michigan Canal seen here not only made it possible to ship goods from as far away as Wyoming to New York by boat for cheap, it also opened up the American West to mass immigration of peoples who used the canal to move from the Northeast into the American West- leading to an increase in workers leading to an increase in profits leading to the United States becoming a global economic superpower.

     The I&M canal has long since been replaced by a more sophisticated canal, but the seemingly inconsequential body of water seen in this photo helped make the US the superpower it is today.