Thread by @AstorAaron

With all this logistics talk, I am introducing my class today to the 19th century development of manufacturing and logistics in one state: Pennsylvania. Especially important were the Schuylkill and Lehigh Canals linking anthracite coal to Philly and to NYC via NJ's Morris Canal.

The Pennsylvania Canal was authorized around the time NY's Erie Canal opened. In many ways, it was Pennsylvania's answer to New York, connecting the Del. River to the Ohio River like the Erie connected the Hudson to the Great Lakes. But it was a tougher engineering feat in PA.

Like with the Erie Canal, the PA Canal (and its branch canals) was surpassed by a railroad roughly along the same route (with some separate tunnels to cross the mountains). What made canals so important was not just the speed of inland shipping. It was the growth of canal towns.

Canal towns produced their own array of millers, manufacturers and merchants who linked the agricultural hinterlands of each canal town to the wider canal network. This was especially true in the "portage" towns where incline railroads climbed the PA mountains.

But the long distance opportunities opened by the canals were unmistakable. Steam boats along the Ohio River extended this network to Wheeling, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans.

Newspaper regularly printed "River Intelligence" reports of water levels along the Ohio, as well as shipment news. Canals avoided that problem with locks. Here is the Cincinnati Enquirer from May 1845:

The railroads rendered many of the canals obsolete by the 1850s, but they did not fall into disuse immediately. Like with trucks & freight trains today, infrastructure depended on multiple possible routes that could avoid RR crash disaster zones, weather events and choke points.

Needless to say, American towns and cities experienced numerous epidemics like yellow fever that often followed the canal and railroad lines. Epidemics hindered trade along the routes. Never did they bring the entire system to a halt. But they certainly affected supply & demand.