Prediction of Completion -- New Conditions Tend to Delay Completion -- New Incentives Incite to Greater Zeal -- State Engineer's Speech -- The Goal -- Summary of Hindrances -- Expedients Used near Rochester -- Difficult Situation near Lyons Overcome -- Swift Action at Tonawanda Needed -- Irondequoit Trough Completed by State Forces -- Resourcefulness Solves Baffling Railroad Problem -- Energetic Efforts Prevent Bad Slide from Being Fatal Hindrance -- Final Work Completed Just in Time -- Ceremony of Removing Last Barrier -- Comparison with Removal of Last Barrier in Original Erie Canal.

As the various sections of the Barge canal were completed, if their locations permitted, they were thrown open to navigation. Additions were thus made from time to time as we have already seen and ordinarily these were regarded simply as natural occurrences in the course of progress, no very unusual efforts being employed to bring them about and little heed being paid to them by others than those directly concerned. But the days shortly preceding the opening of sections that would make the whole new canal from one end to the other available for full-sized traffic were accompanied by rather dramatic scenes. Several years before this period State Engineer Williams in an annual report had predicted that on a certain date the channel would be finished. But between this prediction and its realization the United States had entered the World war and, although new difficulties had arisen to prevent this accomplishment, new reasons had come which seemed to make its attainment imperative and also new incentives were impelling the builders to try the harder to reach their goal. Every patriot was desirous of doing his utmost for his country and because of the assistance a completed deep canal between Great Lakes and ocean might render in emergent war-time needs there fell upon those conducting canal affairs a deep sense of obligation to let nothing short of impossibility stand in the way of opening a full-depth channel at the earliest moment. But, because the war had brought new industrial conditions, it did not seem humanly possible to advance the time of completion ahead of the day already predicted -- the opening of navigation in the spring of 1918 -- and so the fulfillment of that promise became a most solemn and compelling patriotic duty to the State Engineer and the members of his department, to the Superintendent of Public Works and his assistants, and to the contractors and their men.

When this prediction was made, at the close of 1915, its consummation while not easy at least did not seem impossible, but as the time drew near and difficulties and hindrances multiplied it appeared on many critical occasions that the way to success was impassably blocked. The story of the weeks and the months of this fight against seemingly insurmountable obstacles in most interesting, especially the account of the latter days of the contest, when again and again some almost tragic mishap occurred or some new and well-nigh insuperable barrier arose, and defeat was turned into victory only by indomitable perseverance and determination as well as the exercise of ready resourcefulness. The men who spared neither strength nor courage in this all but unequal struggle are worthy of high praise. Their patriotism and their zeal demanded as a reward the complete fulfillment of their expectations. That the canal was not allowed to play the part they anticipated was not because of its lack of fitness nor does the fact detract from the honor due these men. But we shall speak of this later.

To read aright this tale of completing the canal in time to serve a military necessity, we must recall the spirit of the times and feel again the thrill of war's impelling motives. Perhaps we can do this best by jumping to the end of the story and hearing what the State Engineer said on the day the canal was opened. In the evening of that day, May 15, 1918, a company of about a hundred, engineers and contractors, gathered at dinner at the Hotel Rochester in modest celebration of the event. State Engineer Williams was the guest of honor, as being the controlling spirit of the accomplishment, and his speech was reported as follows in a Rochester newspaper the next morning:

"Probably there is no man in the city of Rochester tonight outside of this room -- mark the exception -- who has greater cause for gratification than I. At a time when it is almost providential in its occurrence the Department of the State Engineer has been able to throw open to public use a route of transportation in that part of the country where it is most needed.

"The war has been in progress a little more than one year, so far as our participation in it is concerned. We are told that food will win the war, that money will win the war, that men will win the war, and each of these is a factor without which we cannot win, but underlying everything else as a prime necessity is transportation.

"Every true-hearted American is anxious to do his part in making certain that liberty 'shall not perish from the earth,' but this duty is not entirely taken up with the handling of bayonets and bombs and airplanes and artillery. You men who have strained your nerves and worked your hardest to get this canal open, so that it might carry the necessities of war, have rendered to your country a service whose effect on the decision to be reached in Europe may outweigh the work of an entire army corps. Let not one of you regard lightly what he has done or the part he has played. Engineers and contractors alike, you have served the great cause perhaps better than you know.

"I do not know what caused this war -- commercial ambition, lack of territory, what not -- but I do know that what we have completed today will most certainly be a factor in speeding the war's conclusion, and that after a victorious peace the canal will take the place it was originally designed to occupy -- a successful and economical means for peaceful transportation of the products of the industry of the people of the great commercial state of New York."

In the spring of 1916 the State Engineer had taken a careful inventory of what remained to be done in canal construction and had fixed as a goal that which he had predicted shortly before, the completion of the channel throughout its entire length for the opening of the navigation season of 1918. A year later the United States entered the war and immediately all else throughout the country became secondary to what was most essential for carrying on the conflict. It was seen that under the new conditions it would be most difficult to adhere to the original canal program and it would have been very easy and perhaps scarcely reprehensible under the circumstances to have abandoned the effort and thrown the responsibility on unforeseen vicissitudes of war. But the men of the State Engineer's department were not of a temper to accept defeat thus easily and it was decided to put the program through.

Fortunately for the success of the venture these men had but vague prescience then of the difficulties that were to beset the way or the mountain-high obstacles that were to tax their utmost abilities. Most of the difficulties were due to war conditions. Labor and materials had increased enormously in cost and were hard and sometimes even impossible to get at any price. Transportation routes were congested almost to a standstill. Shipments of materials were sometimes lost and often they were commandeered en route for Government construction. Embargoes almost without number were in force against shipments. The necessity of obtaining priority orders to allow any shipments to be made involved vexatious delays and moreover canal work never was given a class "A" priority rating. There was an acute shortage of coal. Men engaged on canal construction were frequently taken away for army service or were drawn into shipyards or munition plants. An extreme instance of the latter practice may be cited. The erection of the railroad bridge at Brewerton was begun six weeks before May 15. If this bridge were not erected, navigation would be blocked. Three full gangs of erectors were lost one after the other within a period of five weeks by being taken to shipyards, but nevertheless on May 15 the bridge was ready. At another railroad bridge, one at Pittsford, much the same thing occurred and this bridge too was completed on time. But to cap it all there were also hindrances not attributable to the war. As the strenuous year of work advanced and unexpected delays occurred, the more necessary it became to increase the speed on the remaining work. This made the winter of 1917-18 one of intense activity. But it also happened that this winter brought more severe weather conditions than had been experienced in many a year.

To appreciate the magnitude and the difficulty of the task we must learn how the several obstacles were met and overcome, and to do this we must examine a few of the more conspicuous of these in detail. In this study we shall see also what expedients were employed when the carrying out of earlier plans was barred. We shall perceive that several pieces of work were so interdependent that the doing of one necessitated the doing of the whole series in proper sequence and failure at any point would have broken the chain and prevented the canal opening. We shall realize how on several occasions the defeat of the whole plan of opening the canal on the appointed day was averted by the narrowest margin. Moreover the pieces of work we are about to examine were not small in volume. One contract alone, that at Lyons, involved a cost of over $850,000 and required the employment of a large plant of high-grade excavating machinery.

At the beginning of 1917 the greater part of the work remaining to be done was situated in the vicinity of Rochester. It was realized that all which remained in this locality could not be completed by the spring of 1918, but fortunately much of it was located on the spur that stretches from the main line of the canal to the Rochester terminal harbor. The scheme of canal construction at this point has carried the main channel south of the city and across the Genesee river in a pool formed by a dam which is placed about two miles downstream, in fact almost in the heart of the city. Before 1917 was far gone it became evident that this permanent dam could not be completed and so a temporary structure was erected, which would maintain the pool at the crossing of the river and give a main channel of full depth for through canal traffic. But this plan would cut Rochester off from any possibility of being reached by canal boats during 1918. Accordingly a lock was built in the old canal where the new channel joined it west of the city and the old canal was used for access to the city. Of course only old-sized boats could navigate the old waterway, but it was the best that could be done and Rochester had to be content. Even to carry out this program of expedients unflagging zeal and persistent effort alone achieved success.

In the spring of 1917 it became evident that the contractor working in the vicinity of Lyons would not finish his section in time for the proposed opening. Here was an instance of interrelated pieces of work. Dependent on the completion of the channel in this vicinity was the removal of the Montezuma aqueduct, the structure which carried the old canal across the Seneca river and which had to be removed to make way for the Barge canal channel in the bed of the river. While the aqueduct stood there would be navigation within the old channel; to navigate the new canal the structure must be removed; but with the aqueduct gone and the Lyons section not completed there would be no navigation, either by the old or the new route. It was vitally necessary for the plan of completion, therefore, that there should be no uncertainty about finishing the Lyons work. To insure this result the Canal Board terminated the contract and instructed the Superintendent of Public Works to proceed with the work. With his larger resources he was able to make such progress that it was safe to demolish the Montezuma aqueduct after the close of the 1917 navigation season. Both the Lyons section of the new canal and the removal of the aqueduct were completed on time.

In Tonawanda creek was another case of interdependent conditions. To make possible a Barge canal channel it was necessary to remove a dam which maintained the level in the creek for old canal navigation. This dam had to remain in place of course till the end of the 1917 season. After it was removed old canal navigation was destroyed and the new channel could not be used till several railroad and highway bridges spanning the creek had been rebuilt or underpinned, and this bridge work could not be begun until the dam was removed. Swift and well-planned action was demanded here.

As the appointed day drew near it became evident that the great concrete trough which carries the Barge canal on a high embankment across the Irondequoit valley and also some adjacent excavating could not be completed on time by the contractor doing the work. With only a few weeks left the State suspended this contract in March, 1918, and undertook the task of completion. By assembling men and machinery from every possible source the Superintendent of Public Works was able to speed up operations and finish in time. In other instances also men or plants were transferred from the less critical to the more critical points. For example, the contractor working on the Rochester harbor was ordered to shift his excavating machines to the main line of the canal.

Only a few weeks before May 15 it was seen that the stringent condition of the market would not allow the Pennsylvania Railroad company to obtain the steel for its crossing of the Barge canal just west of the Genesee river. For a time it seemed as if this failure would frustrate the whole scheme of opening the canal. By ready action, however, it was arranged to divert the entire traffic of this road, first to the Erie railroad, then to the West Shore railroad and then back to the original line. Thus the Pennsylvania embankment could be cut and this was done just in time to let the water through for the opening day.

As the time drew nearer and nearer the tension under which all had been laboring grew more tense. Day and night the work had been going on, three shifts of men being used in some places. Any mishap now, it seemed, would be most disastrous. On May 1 it looked as though the junction lock west of Rochester could not be completed, but by supplying the contractor with men and teams from among those collected for the Irondequoit job delay was averted. Ten days before the date for opening the canal came the mishap which appeared for a while to be the fatal last straw. The banks in a portion of the canal located in Tonawanda creek slid into the channel. At first a delayed opening seemed inevitable, but by most energetic efforts a hydraulic dredge was rushed to the spot and within twenty-four hours after the slide occurred was at work reopening the channel. At the guard-lock east of the Genesee river, however, was enacted the most dramatic scene of all. Night and day the men worked and on the morning of May 15 with the incoming canal water rising around their waists the final work was done. This was also the final work of all that needed to be done before a Barge canal of full depth could be opened across the whole state from end to end of the new waterway. The seemingly impossible task had been accomplished; the canal was opened on the appointed day.

Channel in concrete trough, across Irondequoit valley. With water in the canal only the tops of the heavy side walls, 96 feet apart, are seen. Two courses of concrete, with tar felt waterproofing, form the bottom. The Irondequoit trough is just three-quarters of a mile long. Maximum height of top of embankment above valley, 60 feet.

We can appreciate now with what satisfaction the men gathered on the evening of May 15 in unpretentious celebration. These were the men, the comparatively small company of engineers and contractors sitting there at dinner, who had led the forces in the mighty undertaking which had culminated that day in success. But the world did not applaud. It was at grips with death just then and did not so much as hear of the event. Even the people of New York state were too absorbed to give it more than a passing glance. In peace times this would have been a momentous occasion. In reality it was significant, but everybody was then engaged in heroic tasks and this passed as but one among the many such deeds.

A few days earlier there had been a very modest ceremony connected with the last stages of preparing the canal for opening. The new canal channel on both sides of the place where it crosses the Genesee river had been dug as dry excavation, since more rapid progress could be made by that means, and a narrow dike had been left at each river bank. On May 10, in the presence of a small company of members of the engineering staff and a few prominent citizens, State Engineer Williams, with a shovel taken from one of the laborers, opened a ditch across the dike at the western bank of the river, letting the waters of the Genesee through to the new channel. This was the last barrier in the whole new waterway. A half hour earlier the dike at the east river bank had been similarly cut.

By way of comparison it is most interesting to refer to what the chronicler of the original Erie canal had to say concerning the removal of the last barrier to through navigation on the first State waterway. The place of final work was at what the early builders termed the "mountain ridge," just west of Lockport. Here was "the spot," said the narrator, "where the waters were to meet when the last blow was struck," and where "nature had interposed her strongest barrier to the enterprises and strength of man." This phrase indicates a marvelous difference between the two undertakings. To the earlier builder the excavation of rock was a supreme difficulty. But no longer has rock excavation the terrors of old. The wide and deep channel of the Barge canal through many rock cuts has occasioned no anxiety. Modern machinery has wrought the change. A comparison of the methods employed at this mountain ridge in building the first and the latest canals presents at least one particularly interesting commentary on the differences of the times. Hand labor and crude horse-driven derricks were the tools of the early builder. For the Barge canal the old cut through this same mountain ridge has been deepened and widened, but in doing the work man used his head instead of his hands. The great cataract at Niagara, operating through powerful modern machines, was the génie which the builder of today commanded to carve the new channel.