THE GREAT LOOP - 12 DECEMBER, 2022

 

Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati sit 350 miles away from the Nation’s capital Washington D.C; the three C’s of Ohio each have around 2 million people in their sprawl, with two of these cities located on global waterways (Lake Erie and the Ohio River), they were connected by canals between the Lake and River back in 1825 by two North-South canals… the Miami-Erie hooked Cincinnati up with Toledo, and the Ohio-Erie hooked Cleveland with Portsmouth.

Remember, back in 1800 New York City and Buffalo New York were connected with the Erie Canal, and Chicago was connected to the Mississippi by the Illinois-Michigan Canal.

All of these connected the entire Great Lakes with the Ohio/Mississippi Rivers, the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico were long “before” the Railroad was built.

Meaning, the cities of New York, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Detroit-Toledo, Chicago, Milwaukee, all of the US and Canadian Great Lakes cities, and river towns like Minneapolis-St. Paul, St. Louis, Memphis, Davenport, New Orleans, and countless other River cities were all connected in one giant waterway loop, even before the St. Lawrence Seaway opened the Lakes to the sea in 1960.

Today (2022) between Rail, Road and water connections and transport, this massive network of transport has been added to the 3,000 mile long Intra-Coastal protected Waterway system (Texas to Boston), creating a 6,000 mile long “Great Loop” called the Inter Coastal Waterway navigation system.

This is like giving an Interstate highway system to boaters, it connects all the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, encircles (and cuts across Florida), goes up the Eastern seaboard past all the major cities, and connects back into to access the five Great Lakes, St. Lawrence Seaway, and the Canadian Canal system.

It is now possible to do the “Great Loop” without ever actually “going-to-sea”... you stay within a ½ mile of land at all times protected by a seawall, or shoreline, for the full 6,000 miles !

  All you need is a boat with less than a 60” (5 foot) draft, and, it is mostly ”free”. The complete story is on Wikipedia at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Loop Enjoy !

REMEMBER, I suggested leaving the Great Lakes via the great loop in a earlier 2019 post  "the Great Loop, the Canal system, and St. Lawrence Seaway make great exits for winter if you are a boat dweller" https://www.mvsofea.com/2019/03/5-march-2019-mv-sofea-deck-log-part-two.html

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