|
Milan was, at this time, the largest
inland port on Lake Erie with the peak year for shipping on the Canal
being
1847 when over 900,000 barrels of wheat were shipped from Milan.
During this time, it was not uncommon to have up to 500 or more farm wagons filled
with goods stretched from the canal basin back to Plank Road all the way to
what is now the Rt.601 and Rt.18 intersection. In desperation, warehouses
were even built on the steep south hill beside the basin and the ships
were loaded by gravity from chutes in the warehouses directly into the
cargo holds. Many of the warehouses needed to have improvised trolley car
systems to transport the wheat and produce to their warehouses
However, the lake
schooners could only move in and out of the basin as fast as the horses
and/or mules could pull them on the towpath, so it became a common sight
to see ships tied together moving down the canal which allowed one set of
horses to pull more than one ship from basin to river and back to the
basin with a new group of ships to be loaded with goods and produce to be
moved across Lake Erie. At it's peak, more than 20 ships per day were leaving
Milan's basin with full loads of wheat from farms from up to 150 miles
away from Milan. River barges (called "Lighters") also transported goods on the canal
to Huron. Eventually a steam driven tugboat was built at Milan shipyards
and it began moving the ships on the canal.
On the north side of the boat basin,
shipbuilders were building ships as fast as they could given their
experience and resources. In the twenty-seven year period between 1841 and
1868, approximately 75 lake schooners were built in Milan. At first they were
in the 50 to 80 foot class, but ships this size could not keep up with the
demand and so by the end of the period, the shipbuilders were building
lake schooners of 150 foot with the average ship building during this
period between 110' and 125'. This put a great strain on the capacity
of the boat basin, the size of the canal and the engineering of the locks.
Each year more and more income from the canal had to be re-invested into
it for upgrading and maintenance. Improved plank roads were built so that
farmers from farther away could bring their goods to Milan faster than
before. It was a win-win situation for everyone. For the town fathers who
saw their investment in the canal pay off in the goods sold in their
stores and the services they offered, for the farmers who finally could
make a decent living working the fertile soil of the area, for the
shipbuilders who couldn't build ships fast enough, for the hundreds of
people who could earn a living wage working on the canal and for the
townspeople who saw great prosperity come to their community. This
economic boom was every bit as significant and bigger than many of the
gold strikes in California. It was legendary growth and the town fathers
confidence in the canal grew with each passing day Yet for all the canal's incredible success, storm clouds
were gathering on the horizon and everybody was either too busy to see it
coming or to confident to worry about it. The
railroads had finally come to Ohio and they were working day and night to
lay new tracks into previously ignored farm
communities throughout north central Ohio. Every new track that was laid was
like a spike driven into the heart of the Ohio canals including the Milan
Canal. The railroads could
simply move goods faster and more efficiently than shipping them on the canals. In order to
compete with the railroads, the cost of shipping on lake
schooners began to plummet and quickly reached the point of no return
which was to spell the doom of lake shipping and the canal. There is nothing that anyone
could have done to stop the progress of the railroads, but in Milan, rather than
welcome the larger railroads in the area, the local business people saw
them as a potential profit center to replace the canal and they tried to raise money to build their
own railroad. However, with the financial losses from the canal fresh in
the investors minds, they could
not raise the necessary funding and eventually the railroads
simply bypassed Milan with their trains, going instead to Norwalk and
Sandusky and taking the shipping business with it. Milan's fate was sealed
and by the turn of the century, Milan had returned to its roots as a
quaint inland village in northern Ohio. |
