For a long time, the easiest way to travel to and from Detroit was by water.
After 1825, most new settlers crossed New York State on the Erie Canal, and then
took a steamboat or sailing vessel across Lake Erie. In 1864, Charles C.
Trowbridge remembered,
In summer we had the pirogue, the bark canoe and
the schooner.
The pirogue was a huge wooden canoe, capable of holding three or four
passengers and a crew of half a dozen men, with their baggage. The bark canoe
was sometimes made so large as to hold twelve persons, with their tents,
provisions, etc. The schooners were very small, not more than sixty tons or
thereabouts, and few in number. . . . A voyage of a thousand miles in a bark
canoe was then a common occurrence.
Launched at Buffalo, New York, in 1818, the Walk-in-the-Water (above) was the
first steamship on the Great Lakes. It made trips between Buffalo and Detroit
and added trips to Mackinac Island in 1819. Wrecked in 1821, its engine was
salvaged and used in a new ship, the Superior. (Image:
Archives of Michigan)
