The people wanted a canal to bring coal from Pennsylvania to southern and central New York State. Construction started on the 97 mile long canal in 1834. Immigrant workers from Ireland and Scotland were lured here by a pay scale that was three times a common laborer’s wages: $11 per month. Skilled workers from the Erie Canal brought new inventions, such as an ingenious stump-puller, using oxen or mules for animal power. As many as 500 men stayed in each area, hand-digging the 97-mile canal through quicksand, swamp and rock, using pick axes and shovels. At a time where there was no engineering school in the country, John Jervis was appointed Chief Engineer of the project and with Holmes Hutchingson, helped design 17 ½ miles of feeders, 116 locks, 19 aqueducts, 52 culverts, 162 bridges and 7 manmade or enhanced natural reservoirs to feed enough water without taking it from Oriskany and Oneida Creeks. Not using a river to feed the summit was never done in America before. They had to prove by timing a rain gauge with a weighted wooden ball in a sluice that there would be enough water retained from rainfall to keep replacing water lost through locks and damage on the summit (a 5-mile flat stretch from Bouckville to Hamilton). This canal would only succeed by getting almost 100 miles of water uphill from Binghamton with a 706’ incline, to the summit and back down a catastrophic decline of 303’ to the Erie Canal in Utica. The state-owned canal operated from 1837 – 1878.