Farmington Canal

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The Farmington Canal

In the early 1800s Middletown and Hartford were becoming very wealthy cities because of their proximity to the Connecticut River. The goods that were produced in Connecticut could be loaded onto boats and barges and shipped off to places where they could be sold. The boats and barges would, of course, would arrive filled with goods and supplies to, in return, supply those same areas. These cities were making lots of money because of trade.
The Yankees brought on the idea of a canal that would extend north and furnish the towns along the way with goods, as well as be an easy route for their manufacturing and products to return to New Haven for sale as well as to be shipped elsewhere. Canals were in use in Italy as far back as 1500. The workers were digging a ditch 4 feet deep, 20 feet wide stretching some 80 miles all the way to Massachusetts in the early 1800s? The tools of choice at that time were shovels and wheelbarrows and they had a pick or two also.
During this time the Erie Canal was being built. Maybe this inspired the idea to build the Farmington Canal. At the time there were plans that would connect Boston, Albany, and NY by canal. The Farmington would be part of that plan. They also wanted to connect it through the Erie Canal and into the Great Lakes. This was a plan that never came to be life. Times were changing back then, as they always are, and newer and better ways of transportation were on the coming up. The locomotive was around, but it wasn't in popular use yet.
Like many New England coastal communities possessing good natural harbors, New Haven emerged from the first quarter of the nineteenth century as an important part with an established mercantile-based economy. However, between 1830 and 1850, the main focus of the city’s economy shifted from mercantilism to manufacturing. This change in the economic base of New Haven was started by the construction and opening of the Farmington Ca...