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Re: [OM] Wabash and Erie Canal near Fort Wayne

Subject: Re: [OM] Wabash and Erie Canal near Fort Wayne
From: Paul Braun <pbraun42@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 08 May 2012 23:03:42 -0500
On 5/8/12 14:02 : , Chuck Norcutt wrote:
> Somewhere around here I have book about the building of the Erie Canal.
>    The Erie was also dug by hand which had to be a monstrous undertaking
> going all across the top of New York from Albany to Buffalo.  But the
> most amazing part to me was that they were crossing heavily forested
> ground and had to remove all the trees (including stumps and roots).
> The solution was supposedly concocted by some of the workers and not the
> project engineers (actually, there weren't any professional engineers in
> New York at that date).  The solution for getting rid of the stumps was
> to literally rip them out of the ground with a device consisting of a
> thick axle made from a heavy log to which a wheel was attached at each
> end.  The wheels, IIRC, were about 20 feet (6 meters) in diameter.  Then
> a chain was attached to the axle and to the stump.  Teams of 2-4 oxen
> would pull on the device causing the wheels to rotate and the axle to
> turn.  That in turn caused the chain to wind up on the axle and pull the
> stump out.  They must have pulled many, many thousands of trees this way.
Never heard that.  Amazing what you can come up with when clever, 
resourceful people are left to figure out an impossible task...

-- 



Paul Braun
Valparaiso, IN


"It's such a fine line between stupid, and clever." - David St. Hubbins

"Music washes from the soul the dust of everyday life" - Harlan Howard

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