Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this interview.
The Erie Canal,which often evokes songs of a mule dragging a barge through the boomtowns of yesteryear, is now thought of as a tourist attraction, and kept afloat by the 21st service industry.
And while the newly-widened Panama Canal is the story of megaboats and globalization,back in 1825, the Erie Canal marked a fresh age in American religion, and economics,and politics. A fresh book, "Heaven's Ditch: God, or Gold and Murder on the Erie Canal," looks back at the Canal's influence in its early years. Author Jack Kelly says that the visionary energy along the Erie Canal helped create contemporary America.
Source: wnyc.org