St. Lawrence Seaway

The Event Opening of a massive transportation project, funded jointly by Canada and the United States, which connected the Great Lakes to Atlantic Ocean shipping lanes

Date First used on April 25, 1959; officially opened to ships on June 26, 1959

The St. Lawrence Seaway spurred the economic development of the Great Lakes region by providing both hydroelectric power and the economical transport of the raw materials upon which the survival of American and Canadian heavy industry depended.

A navigable water passage through the St. Lawrence River, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, had been advocated since 1895, when the U.S.-Canada Deep Waterways Commission was formed to evaluate the merits of the creation of a seaway. Though an International Joint Commission was created in 1909 to pursue the idea, it was not until the late 1920’s that the United States and Canada negotiated the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Deep Waterway Treaty, which would have authorized construction.

However, though the treaty was signed in 1932 by the United States and Canada, it was later rejected by the United States Senate. In 1941, another attempt—the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Basin Agreement—was made to negotiate a partnership for improving navigation and generating hydroelectric electricity. Eight years later, the U.S. Congress still had not signed the agreement.

Canada Takes the Lead

Tired of waiting for an American commitment to the project, Canada’s parliament approved the St. Lawrence Seaway Authority Act and the International Rapids Power Development Act in 1951. The St. Lawrence Seaway Authority Act authorized the construction of navigation locks and canals in Canada, while the International Rapids Power Development Act organized the construction of the power plant necessary to produce hydroelectricity in the International Rapids Section of the St. Lawrence River.

After more than three decades of inertia, Senator Alexander Wiley from Wisconsin and Senator George Dondero from Michigan introduced a bill concerning the U.S. portion of the seaway. Among the reasons presented to Congress for going forward with the project were the projected contributions of the seaway to the transportation of iron ore and the production of low-cost electric power. Indeed, after World War II, the United States realized that its own reserves of iron ore were dwindling and that other sources had to be used to supply the blast furnaces of the steel industry. Large quantities of high-grade iron ore were available in Labrador, Venezuela, and Liberia. This ore could be shipped through the Great Lakes to supply the blast furnaces of Ohio and western Pennsylvania. The Wiley-Dondero Act, also known as the St. Lawrence Seaway Act, was approved by the House and the Senate in 1954 and signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on May 13, 1954.

Construction

The St. Lawrence Seaway Authority was in charge of the construction and maintenance of the Canadian portion of the project, while St. Lawrence Seaway Development was responsible for the American project. The construction of the seaway was an enormous task: It required moving nearly 200 million tons of earth, using 6 million cubic yards of concrete, building 43 miles of dikes, and digging 66 miles of new channels. The waterway already built had a depth of 14 feet, insufficient to accommodate large sea vessels, so the seaway project included deepening the existing channels to 27 feet. To decrease the time it would take ships to travel the length of the seaway (more than 3,000 miles), the number of locks was decreased from thirty to nineteen. Moreover, in order to accommodate large seagoing vessels, each lock was to be 766 feet long, 80 feet wide, and 30 feet deep.

The St. Lawrence Seaway project called for the building of the Moses-Saunders, Long Sault, and Iroquois dams in the International Rapids section of the seaway to generate hydroelectric power. This project was made particularly difficult on the Canadian side by the relocation of the about 6,500 people who lived in the area of Ingleside, Long Sault, and Morrisburg, which would be flooded by the dams. The American side posed a lesser problem because the area affected was largely rural and sparsely populated. Hydro Ontario for Canada and the New York State Power Authority for the United States were responsible for financing the power portion of the St. Lawrence Seaway project.

Impact

The Seaway began use on April 25, 1959. In June of 1959, the official openimg ceremonies were held with Queen Elizabeth II, representing Canada, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower in attendance. The seaway project cost the United States 133.8 million dollars and Canada 336.2 million dollars.

The St. Lawrence Seaway, stretching from Lake Superior to the Atlantic Ocean, is divided into the Lachine, the Beauharnois-Soulange, the International Rapids, and the Great Lakes Channels sections. In all, the St. Lawrence Seaway provides 2,342 miles of navigable waterways, opening the entire Great Lakes region to seagoing commerce.

The project was the product of the recognition of the United States and Canada of their linked economic futures. Building on a long tradition of cooperation between the two countries, it represented their joint concern for the economic health and development of their heartlands and reflected the grand scale and optimism of development projects in the postwar period.

Bibliography

Hills, Theo L. The Saint Lawrence Seaway. London: Methuen, 1959. Basic description of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Mabee, Carleton. The Seaway Story. New York: Macmillan, 1961. The story of how the seaway was built and evolved.