Note 31 — Chapter III

The Middlesex Canal was twenty-seven miles in length and joined Boston Harbor at Charlestown with the Merrimac River. It was incorporated in 1789, begun in 1790 and opened in 1804. Its cost to 1815 was over half a million. It was thirty feet wide at the top, twenty feet wide at the base and three feet deep. The rise from Boston to summit level was one hundred and four feet and the descent to the Merrimac, thirty-two feet. It included twenty locks, seventy-five feet long, ten feet wide at the base and eleven feet wide at the top, capable of locking a boat of fourteen tons. The income from tolls beginning with $7,000 in 1808 had increased to $25,000 in 1815; land beside the canal had increased in value one-third, and New Hampshire timber at once became worth from one to three dollars per ton standing, which before was worth nothing. The success of this canal must be considered as having something to do in the promotion of the Erie Canal.