The Lake’s Trade, 1795–1936
This lake was a commercial corridor for two hundred years before it was a tourist destination, and the story of that is well told. The numbers are harder to come by. This page charts the one series the site can build from a book already in its own reader, sets out the narrative the literature supports, and is open about the one series at the center of the subject that it could not find: Champlain Canal tonnage by year.
The missing series: Champlain Canal tonnage by year
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Steamboat size, cost and power, 1809–1906
Ross tabled twenty-eight steamers in 1878 — build year, tonnage, length, horsepower and cost — and his book is already in the reader here. His figures are charted below.
—heavier, 1809 to 1906
—more expensive
—more powerful
Every vessel indexed to the Vermont of 1809, on a log scale. All
three lines start at the same point because each is indexed to the first vessel; the difference is how far they separate. Capacity and
capital roughly keep pace with each other. Power grows faster than either — which is what a passenger
and mail trade does when railway competition is approaching.
Six periods of the lake’s trade, 1795–1936
Four commodity booms and their collapses, 1840–1900
Every figure here keeps the caveat its source came with, on the line rather than in a footnote.
Bloomery forges in blast, Clinton and Essex counties, 1886–1898. In twelve years the count fell from 27 to 2.