Wabash & Erie Canal Lock 47 is shown here Monday. The park at 5329 S. Frye St. will have its grand opening Saturday at 10 a.m. Parking is off Fenway Drive. Submitted photo
Although the Wabash & Erie Canal rolled through Terre Haute in the 1800s, virtually no evidence of its existence is available today.
That will change when Lock 47, part of where the canal once coursed through the city and constructed by Robert Logan in 1837 and 1838, has its grand opening as a park on Saturday.
The Wabash & Erie Canal carried water from the Great Lakes to the Ohio River in Evansville. The Canal was necessary because the Wabash River was considered too inconsistent in its water height to transport merchandise.
The system helped transport passengers and goods, particularly pork. Terre Haute was known then as “Hoggopolis” for being the second leading producer of pork in the U.S. outside of Cincinnati, said Sam Ligget, a member of the Canal Society of Indiana who writes about the canal’s history for The Tumble, the society’s journal.
Terre Haute had eight packing plants, six for pork packing exclusively. One of the pork packing plants was occasionally cleaned up so theatrical productions could be presented there, Ligget said.
Lock 47, now dry, controlled water levels to allow boats to pass through.
Logan crafted Lock 47 from limestone quarried in Putnamville and hauled to Vigo County because he built it before the state began experiencing financial trouble.
“William Ball, the resident canal engineer, said that was the best lock in the whole system in Indiana,” said Jo Ligget, Sam’s wife and another member of the Canal Society. “Logan did good work.”
She added, “The Wabash and Erie at that time was the longest canal ever built in the world. It’s still the longest in the Western Hemisphere at 486 miles.” China’s Grand Canal is 2,000 miles long.
Lock 47 is surrounded by what will become Lock 47 Park, which boasts a new trail that leads to a bridge and bench overlooking the lock. Vigo County Parks and Recreation Department Superintendent Adam Grossman said restoring the lock and creating the park cost $7,000 and included a lot of volunteer work.
“It’s getting way closer to becoming a park,” Sam Ligget said. “Adam (Grossman) has done a better job with that than what the plans proposed — if you built the parking lot where they wanted it, that land’s swampy. So Adam put the parking lot near the toe path because it’s high ground.” The parking lot is off Fenway Drive.
Locks were sequentially numbered beginning where the canal began at the Indiana-Ohio state line near Toledo. Terre Haute was home to Locks 46 and 47; Lock 46 no longer exists.
Weather hampered the canal system, as there was either too much rain or not enough, Sam Ligget said. Two huge reservoirs were built in Clay County, but officials decided to break them up because the water was getting infected and making residents sick.
Vigilante groups stormed the canal reservoirs in protest, forcing the governor to order militia from Evansville to deter them. Terre Haute’s militia wasn’t used because militia members would be fighting vigilantes who were neighbors and family.
Eventually, the locks disappeared along with the canal system in 1876.
“The reason the canal went under was the railroads,” said Sam Ligget. “The railroads were already coming. Indiana was hedging its bets on the canal, putting money in both the canal and the railroads. When the canal went bankrupt, guess who bought it — the railroads.”
Sam Ligget said the Terre Haute North Junior Historical Society bought the property around Lock 47 and gave it to the Parks Department because they wanted to build a park out of it, but the superintendent at the time wasn’t interested. The department received a $900,000 grant from the state in 2009 to create a park but returned the money in 2013 due to its inactivity.
The Canal Society of Indiana has about 80 members from Indiana and Ohio to California, Sam said. They put up signs designating areas where the canal ran. Jo and Sam visit elementary schools to teach students about the canal.
“When we talk to the kids at Fuquay School, their eyes light up because as you come down the hill there on Margaret by Grandview Cemetery and you dip down into the railroad track, that’s where the canal was,” said Sam. “That’s so close to their school, so they all know that spot.”
Lock 47, at 5329 S. Frye St., will have its grand opening as a park Saturday at 10 a.m. Parking is off Fenway Drive.
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