The Wabash and Erie Canal at Logansport

You are standing along the route of the Wabash and Erie Canal, once the longest canal in the United States. In eighteen twenty-seven, Congress granted land to help Indiana dig it. Work began at Fort Wayne in eighteen thirty-two, and the waterway reached Logansport here by eighteen thirty-seven, then pushed on to Lafayette and eventually all the way to the Ohio River at Evansville.

When the southern stretch was finished in eighteen fifty-three, the finished canal ran roughly four hundred and sixty miles, linking Lake Erie at Toledo, Ohio, with the Ohio River. For a brief moment it was a marvel of commerce. But the railroads arrived almost as fast as the diggers did. By eighteen sixty much of the southern section was already abandoned, and the whole Indiana canal was sold off at auction in eighteen seventy-six.