:) I think it's called 'The America Canal' these days.
I've traveled through time all of my life, just never had a choice of which direction I wanted to go.
The Erie used to run from Lake Erie to the Ohio River on the eastern side of Ohio. It connected most of the small towns, and had a lot of feeders like The Columbus Feeder, the Sandy and Beaver, and the Walhonding Feeder. It was the easiest way to get goods from the ore and manufacturing rich area of the great lakes down to the Ohio River, which of course feeds into the Mississippi where you can also access the Mighty Mo'. It's reign was ended both by steam and gasoline, as well as the 1913 flood destroying a lot of it's infrastructure.
Tangent: I was always pretty crap at geography. Way I remember it, we had to learn countries and borders and population numbers and other stuff that made our eyes glaze over. Geography and History should be taught together, because they're inextricably linked. With a talented teacher, (White) kids would inhale that shit into their minds with no effort at all.
I'll look into the whole Erie Canal affair later. Thanks for making me curious.
I only know about it because it was such a big piece of Eastern Ohio history, it's artifacts are still everywhere, and it was a large portion of the Ohio history class that everyone here used to take in 7th grade.