This is a massive, massive construction and engineering project, unlike anything we've ever seen.
It's like an Apollo program for the era.
The canal is, what, 350 miles long, which is an order of magnitude bigger than any canal ever built in America before.
And it can cut time travel from Albany to Buffalo from two weeks to just five days.
It's actually like a teleporter in Star Trek or something for the era.
Well, that's the important point, I think.
The cost of shipping, let's say, a ton of wheat from where it was produced
to the market in New York City was like one-tenth of what it had been previously.
It's a dramatic reduction.
And this is where the U.S.
Begins to grow rapidly because the transport costs fell so dramatically.
Today on the story of money, the 19th century construction project
that helped make New York the country's premier financial center.
We're talking about the 363 mile long Erie Canal,
which links the Atlantic Ocean to America's interior and how its construction almost never happened.
But it did.
And Gillian, I'm particularly excited about this story because, well, our hero is kind of this weird,
underappreciated corner of the bond market that really kind of only exists in America.
And I'm talking about the municipal bond market,
which are bonds sold by US states, local authorities, schools, even prisons.