noise."Signal Boost: Up The Ohio Canal · 2:03am Feb 4th, 2023
We've got another Not-A-Contest fic here, this one by BlueBook. You might remember his previous entry, Team Boat (if you don't, you should read that one, too). It's got things I love in it--obscure or forgotten tech, actual facts, and boats!
It's also got ponies, and they have hats!
Y'all might remember a while back that I wrote a canal arc. Back in the day, the best way to move something heavy was to float it on the water. This was fine if you happened to be on a body of water, but if you weren't it was less convenient.
The good news was that you could dig a ditch, let it fill with water, and boom! You're all set. Well, unless the land isn't flat, then you've got to do some work to get the boats up and down. Obviously, this is still a thing; as I recall, the Panama Canal just recently got its locks enlarged so bigger boats would fit, and here on the Great Lakes we've got some sets of locks, as well. (The biggest ore carriers on the Great Lakes can't actually leave; they won't fit through the locks in the Welland Canal.)
The US never had all that many canals simply because railroads were invented. Trains aren't as efficient as boats, but it sure was a lot cheaper to build railroads than canals—trains aren't all that great at hills, either, but they're better than boats.
BlueBook knows way more about canals than I do. He has to; this is a genuine historical location and I have no doubt that every place mentioned in the story actually existed (or still does). There's one fact in there that sounded so stupid to me that I knew it had to be true. I won't spoil it by telling you what it is.
Oh, and did I mention that the canal really existed and some of it still does? Yeah, and if you're coming out to Trotcon from the east, you can visit it on the way to or from the con! I can't promise you'll see Rosemary there, though.
One more thing I should mention, which you'll know if you read Team Boat: BlueBook is great at writing in the style of the time, one of only two people on FimFic I know who can pull it off. This story reads like a genuine letter from the 1800s.
Also I should confess that I was given early access and knew when BlueBook was going to publish to give me an opportunity to have the blog ready to go.
I forgot until about an hour ago.
Don't keep us in suspense! Who's the other one?
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GroaningGreyAgony with this:
- MLP: FiM
- Adventure
Lord Dunsany has a curious adventure in the Lands of Dream, in a realm where beasts can talk and the sun rides low in the sky.Sold!
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Thanks!
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Ha! And here I was feeling guilty for having written my authors notes, realizing they were a rambling mess, and not fixing them until after I published to story. Which should have been published earlier in the day, if I'd gotten off my duff.
"One more thing I should mention, which you'll know if you read Team Boat: BlueBook is great at writing in the style of the time, one of only two people on FimFic I know who can pull it off. This story reads like a genuine letter from the 1800s."
I'm blushing!
There was 2 canals in Ohio and sections still exist and the Ohio Historical society has preserved at least 1 canal boat
"The scroll unfurls
We hear the voice
Of Marty Markowitz
Now he's not frontin'
The Funky Bunch
He's Borough President
From the F to the G to the L to the J
Now who knows what that spells?
Let's celebrate Brooklyn now
Even the Gowanus Canal
Even the Gowanus Canal
Even the Gowanus Canal"
- They Might Be Giants
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oh my god what a story!
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All good authors love to hear the sound of deadlines whooshing by.
It's totally true.
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Probably more than two canals, although I don't know how many were of significant length.
Does make me wonder if Michigan ever had any canals of any significance. I don't think we did, but I could be very wrong about that.
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derpicdn.net/img/2022/10/26/2974457/large.png
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One of my all-time favorites on FimFic.
5712501 there was only the 2 that went across the state the "Miami and Erie" and the "Ohio and Erie" canals north to south. Indian Lake, Grand Lake Saint Marys, Buckeye lake were man made as reservoirs for the canals..
No idea about canals in Michigan either though except for the border with Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin with a couple of rivers its surrounded by the Great Lakes. There was also the Battle of Toledo over a few things including water access
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I got curious and looked it up, looks like there were the two major canals (Miami and Erie, and Ohio and Erie) along with a few shorter ones. One into Pennsylvania, too--the Mahoning/Pennsylvania and Ohio canal. There's a Mahoning oasis on the Ohio Turnpike, IIRC; I wonder how near the canal it is?
The Miami and Erie has a preserved section in Dayton, maybe if I have a chance over Trotcon I can check that out.
I got curious and looked up canals in Michigan. Three of them I wouldn't personally count as canals:
The Soo Locks (a connection from Lake Superior to Lake Huron which lets ships bypass the rapids in the St. Marys River)
The Keweenaw Waterway (a dredged-out river and some canal to let ships go from Torch Lake to Lake Superior)
The Clam Lake Canal (.3 mile [.5km] canal between Lake Cadillac and Lake Mitchell)
The only one that was going to be a proper canal, to my mind, was the Clinton-Kalamazoo canal, meant to connect Lake St. Clair to Lake Michigan (basically, a passage across Michigan). Wikipedia isn't exactly clear on how many miles of it got built, but does say that the first section of the canal was opened in 1845 and by 1848 it was abandoned. Based on where Wikipedia says you can see remains and assuming that they did go to Lake St. Clair, they made it almost twenty miles of the proposed 216 before giving up.
5712623 Well keep in mind the canals in Ohio were built 2decades before the canals were started in Michigan. At a guess it was abandoned since trains were getting more and more common. I believe the section in Dayton also has a preserved working lock as well
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I believe that was the case. It's a lot cheaper to build a railroad, and the tech was mature enough that it would be decently reliable and across the flat-ish Michigan, there wouldn't be many major engineering challenges to contend with.
I'm definitely gonna try and check that out at Trotcon, either this year or next.
5713888 there is one or two places where you can see rebuilt or recreations of canal boats
https://roscoevillage.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscoe_Village_(Coshocton,_Ohio)
https://www.ohiohistory.org/visit/browse-historical-sites/johnston-farm-indian-agency/ restored canal section where you can ride a boat