the entire New York canal, and, though the mountains of the
Altoona region loomed straight up nearly three thousand feet,
Pennsylvania overcame the lowlands by main strength and the
mountain peaks by strategy and was sending canal boats from
Philadelphia to Pittsburgh within nine years of the completion of
the Erie Canal.

The eastern division of the Pennsylvania Canal, known as the
Union Canal, from Reading on the Schuylkill to Middletown on the
Susquehanna, was completed in 1827. The Juniata section was then
driven on up to Hollidaysburg. Beyond the mountain barrier, the
Conemaugh, the Kiskiminitas, and the Allegheny were followed to
Pittsburgh. But the greatest feat in the whole enterprise was the
conquest of the mountain section, from Hollidaysburg to
Johnstown. This was accomplished by the building of five inclined
planes on each slope, each plane averaging about 2300 feet in
length and 200 feet in height. Up or down these slopes and along
the intermediate level sections cars and giant cradles (built to
be lowered into locks where they could take an entire canal boat
as a load) were to be hauled or lowered by horsepower, and later,
by steam. After the plans had been drawn up by Sylvester Welch
and Moncure Robinson, the Pennsylvania Legislature authorized the
work in 1831, and traffic over this aerial route was begun in
March, 1834. In autumn of that year, the stanch boat Hit or Miss,
from the Lackawanna country, owned by Jesse Crisman and captained
by Major Williams, made the journey across the whole length of
the canal. It rested for a night on the Alleghany summit "like
Noah's Ark on Ararat," wrote Sherman Day, "descended the next
morning into the Valley of the Mississippi, and sailed for St.
Louis."