World Heritage Site
A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area, selected by the United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization as having cultural, scientific or other form of significance, is protected by international treaties. The sites are judged important to the collective interests of humanity. To be selected, a World Heritage Site must be an classified landmark, unique in some respect as a geographically and identifiable place having special cultural or physical significance, it may signify a remarkable accomplishment of humanity, serve as evidence of our intellectual history on the planet. The sites are intended for practical conservation for posterity, which otherwise would be subject to risk from human or animal trespassing, unmonitored/uncontrolled/unrestricted access, or threat from local administrative negligence. Sites are demarcated by UNESCO as protected zones; the list is maintained by the international World Heritage Program administered by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, composed of 21 "states parties" that are elected by their General Assembly.
The programme catalogues and conserves sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common culture and heritage of humanity. Under certain conditions, listed sites can obtain funds from the World Heritage Fund; the program began with the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World's Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on 16 November 1972. Since 193 state parties have ratified the convention, making it one of the most recognized international agreements and the world's most popular cultural program; as of July 2018, a total of 1,092 World Heritage Sites exist across 167 countries. Italy, with 54 sites, has the most of any country, followed by China, France, Germany and Mexico. In 1954, the government of Egypt decided to build the new Aswan High Dam, whose resulting future reservoir would inundate a large stretch of the Nile valley containing cultural treasures of ancient Egypt and ancient Nubia. In 1959, the governments of Egypt and Sudan requested UNESCO to assist their countries to protect and rescue the endangered monuments and sites.
In 1960, the Director-General of UNESCO launched an appeal to the member states for an International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia. This appeal resulted in the excavation and recording of hundreds of sites, the recovery of thousands of objects, as well as the salvage and relocation to higher ground of a number of important temples, the most famous of which are the temple complexes of Abu Simbel and Philae; the campaign, which ended in 1980, was considered a success. As tokens of its gratitude to countries which contributed to the campaign's success, Egypt donated four temples: the Temple of Dendur was moved to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Temple of Debod was moved to the Parque del Oeste in Madrid, the Temple of Taffeh was moved to the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in the Netherlands, the Temple of Ellesyia to Museo Egizio in Turin; the project cost $80 million, about $40 million of, collected from 50 countries. The project's success led to other safeguarding campaigns: saving Venice and its lagoon in Italy, the ruins of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan, the Borobodur Temple Compounds in Indonesia.
UNESCO initiated, with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, a draft convention to protect the common cultural heritage of humanity. The United States initiated the idea of cultural conservation with nature conservation; the White House conference in 1965 called for a "World Heritage Trust" to preserve "the world's superb natural and scenic areas and historic sites for the present and the future of the entire world citizenry". The International Union for Conservation of Nature developed similar proposals in 1968, they were presented in 1972 to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. Under the World Heritage Committee, signatory countries are required to produce and submit periodic data reporting providing the World Heritage Committee with an overview of each participating nation's implementation of the World Heritage Convention and a "snapshot" of current conditions at World Heritage properties. A single text was agreed on by all parties, the "Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage" was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on 16 November 1972.
The Convention came into force on 17 December 1975. As of May 2017, it has been ratified by 193 states parties, including 189 UN member states plus the Cook Islands, the Holy See and the State of Palestine. Only four UN member states have not ratified the Convention: Liechtenstein, Nauru and Tuvalu. A country must first list its significant natural sites. A country may not nominate sites. Next, it can place sites selected from that list into a Nomination File; the Nomination File is evaluated by the International Council on Monuments and Sites and the World Conservation Union. These bodies make their recommendations to the World Heritage Committee; the Committee meets once per year to determine whether or not to inscribe each nominated property on the World Heritage List and sometimes defers or refers the decision to request more information from the country which nominated the site. There are ten selection criteria – a site must meet at least one of them to be included on the list
Great Lakes
The Great Lakes called the Laurentian Great Lakes and the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of interconnected freshwater lakes in the upper mid-east region of North America, on the Canada–United States border, which connect to the Atlantic Ocean through the Saint Lawrence River. They consist of Lakes Superior, Huron and Ontario, although hydrologically, there are four lakes, Erie and Michigan-Huron; the connected lakes form the Great Lakes Waterway. The Great Lakes are the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth by total area, second-largest by total volume, containing 21% of the world's surface fresh water by volume; the total surface is 94,250 square miles, the total volume is 5,439 cubic miles less than the volume of Lake Baikal. Due to their sea-like characteristics the five Great Lakes have long been referred to as inland seas. Lake Superior is the second largest lake in the world by area, the largest freshwater lake by area. Lake Michigan is the largest lake, within one country.
The Great Lakes began to form at the end of the last glacial period around 14,000 years ago, as retreating ice sheets exposed the basins they had carved into the land which filled with meltwater. The lakes have been a major source for transportation, migration and fishing, serving as a habitat to a large number of aquatic species in a region with much biodiversity; the surrounding region is called the Great Lakes region. Though the five lakes lie in separate basins, they form a single interconnected body of fresh water, within the Great Lakes Basin, they form a chain connecting the east-central interior of North America to the Atlantic Ocean. From the interior to the outlet at the Saint Lawrence River, water flows from Superior to Huron and Michigan, southward to Erie, northward to Lake Ontario; the lakes drain a large watershed via many rivers, are studded with 35,000 islands. There are several thousand smaller lakes called "inland lakes," within the basin; the surface area of the five primary lakes combined is equal to the size of the United Kingdom, while the surface area of the entire basin is about the size of the UK and France combined.
Lake Michigan is the only one of the Great Lakes, within the United States. The lakes are divided among the jurisdictions of the Canadian province of Ontario and the U. S. states of Michigan, Minnesota, Indiana, Ohio and New York. Both Ontario and Michigan include in their boundaries portions of four of the lakes: Ontario does not border Lake Michigan, Michigan does not border Lake Ontario. New York and Wisconsin's jurisdictions extend into two lakes, each of the remaining states into one of the lakes; as the surfaces of Lakes Superior, Huron and Erie are all the same elevation above sea level, while Lake Ontario is lower, because the Niagara Escarpment precludes all natural navigation, the four upper lakes are called the "upper great lakes". This designation, however, is not universal; those living on the shore of Lake Superior refer to all the other lakes as "the lower lakes", because they are farther south. Sailors of bulk freighters transferring cargoes from Lake Superior and northern Lake Michigan and Lake Huron to ports on Lake Erie or Ontario refer to the latter as the lower lakes and Lakes Michigan and Superior as the upper lakes.
This corresponds to thinking of Lakes Erie and Ontario as "down south" and the others as "up north". Vessels sailing north on Lake Michigan are considered "upbound" though they are sailing toward its effluent current; the Chicago River and Calumet River systems connect the Great Lakes Basin to the Mississippi River System through man-made alterations and canals. The St. Marys River, including the Soo Locks, connects Lake Superior to Lake Huron; the Straits of Mackinac connect Lake Michigan to Lake Huron. The St. Clair River connects Lake Huron to Lake St. Clair; the Detroit River connects Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie; the Niagara River, including Niagara Falls, connects Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. The Welland Canal, bypassing the Falls, connects Lake Erie to Lake Ontario; the Saint Lawrence River and the Saint Lawrence Seaway connect Lake Ontario to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which connects to the Atlantic Ocean. Lakes Huron and Michigan are sometimes considered a single lake, called Lake Michigan–Huron, because they are one hydrological body of water connected by the Straits of Mackinac.
The straits are 120 feet deep. Lake Nipigon, connected to Lake Superior by the Nipigon River, is surrounded by sill-like formations of mafic and ultramafic igneous rock hundreds of meters high; the lake lies in the Nipigon Embayment, a failed arm of the triple junction in the Midcontinent Rift System event, estimated at 1,109 million years ago. Green Bay is an arm of Lake Michigan, along the south coast of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the east coast of Wisconsin, it is separated from the rest of the lake by the Door Peninsula in Wisconsin, the Garden Peninsula in Michigan, the chain of islands between
Poteaux-sur-sol
Poteaux-sur-sol is a style of timber framing, in which closely spaced posts rest on a timber sill. Poteaux-en-terre and pieux-en-terre are similar, but the spaced posts extend into the ground rather than resting on a sill on a foundation, therefore are a type of post in ground construction. Poteaux-sur-sol is similar to the framing style known in the United Kingdom as close studding. Poteaux-sur-sol has confusingly, been used for other types of timber framing which have a sill timber such as post-and-plank, but this is considered incorrect by some scholars. Poteaux-sur-sol is a part of American historic carpentry but is known by its French name in North America as it was used by French and French-Canadian people in the region known as New France. Besides its appearance in French colonial architecture it was used in the 19th century by Ukrainian peasants living on the open steppes or anywhere there was a timber shortage. In the present-day United States, houses in this style can be found in Ste.
Genevieve, Missouri. Most are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Bousillage French architecture French colonization of the Americas Old Cahokia Courthouse Pierrotage Poteaux-en-terre
Southern Illinois
Southern Illinois is the southern third of the state of Illinois. The southern part of Illinois has a unique regional history. Part of downstate Illinois, the Southern Illinois region is bordered by the two most voluminous rivers in the United States: the Mississippi River and its connecting Missouri River to the west, the Ohio River to the east and south with the Wabash as tributary. Southern Illinois' most populated city is Belleville at 44,478. Other principal cities include Alton, Collinsville, Effingham, O'Fallon, Herrin, Mt. Vernon and Carbondale, where the main campus of Southern Illinois University is located. Residents may travel to amenities in St. Louis and Cape Girardeau, Missouri; the region is home to a major military installation. The area has a population of 1.2 million people, who live in rural towns and cities separated by extensive farmland and the Shawnee National Forest. The two higher density areas of population are Metro-East, the industrialized Illinois portion of the St. Louis Metropolitan Area, the Carbondale-Marion-Herrin, Illinois Combined Statistical Area, centered on Carbondale and Marion, a two-county area, home to 123,272 residents.
The first European settlers were French colonists in the part of their North American empire called Illinois Country. Settlers migrated from the Upland South of the United States, traveling by the Ohio River; the region was affiliated with the southern agricultural economy, based on enslaved African Americans as workers on major plantations, rural culture. Some settlers owned slaves before the territory was organized and slavery was prohibited. Many areas developed an economy based on coal mining. Except for the counties in the St. Louis MSA, much of Southern Illinois is still culturally affiliated with the Mid-South: Western Kentucky, Southwestern Indiana, West Tennessee, the Missouri Bootheel; the people speak with similar accents throughout this area. Southern Illinois, the earliest settled and once the wealthiest part of Illinois, is known for its rich history and the abundance of antebellum architecture remaining in its small towns and cities; the earliest inhabitants of Illinois are thought to have arrived about 12,000 BC.
They were indigenous hunter-gatherers, but they developed a primitive system of agriculture. After AD 1000, the production of agricultural surpluses resulted in the development of complex, hierarchical societies. With the rise of the Mississippian culture in the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys, tribal leaders organized thousands of workers to build complex urban areas featuring numerous large earthworks – pyramidal and conical mounds used for religious and ceremonial purposes. Cahokia, located within the boundaries of present-day Collinsville, was the major regional center of this culture, it contains the largest prehistoric earthworks in the Americas, has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The mound builders' culture seems to have collapsed between AD 1400–1500; the Mississippians had abandoned Cahokia long. The Illinois tribes, for whom the state is named, other historic tribes migrated to Southern Illinois around AD 1500. Archeologists say, they had migrated from eastern areas, where Algonquian-language tribes emerged along the Atlantic Coast and waterways.
The Illini left numerous artifacts, including burial sites, burned-out campfires along the bases of bluffs, flint implements, weapons. Structures built by them include stone forts or "pounds". Visitors can see a stone fort in Giant City State Park near Makanda. At least eight other such structures are known in the region. In about 1673, French explorers from Quebec became the first Europeans to reach Illinois; the French named the area Illinois after the Indians. The French explored the Mississippi River, establishing outposts and seeking a route to the Pacific Ocean and the Far East; as increasing Indian unrest and warfare began in Northern Illinois over the lucrative fur trade along the Great Lakes, the French concentrated on building outposts in Southern Illinois. The earliest European settlers were concentrated along the Mississippi and Wabash rivers, which provided easy routes for travel and trade; the settlements including Cahokia town and Chartres became important market villages and supply depots between Canada and the French ports on the lower Mississippi River.
Other important early outposts in Southern Illinois were at Old Shawneetown and Fort Massac on the Ohio River. After defeating the French in the French and Indian War and signing the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the English ruled the Great Lakes region. At the time, many French settlers moved from towns on the eastern side of the Mississippi to the western side, ruled by Spain after the war, it took over all the Louisiana Territory west of the river. During the American Revolutionary War, the Southern Illinois area was the scene of the best known campaign in what was the American west, when Virginians sought to occupy it against the British. European-American settlers were slow to arrive in Illinois after the United States victory in the American Revolutionary War. By 1800, fewer than 2,000 European Americans lived in Illinois. Soon more settlers came from the backwoods areas of Kentucky, Virginia and the Carolinas; these early settlers w
Prairie
Prairies are ecosystems considered part of the temperate grasslands and shrublands biome by ecologists, based on similar temperate climates, moderate rainfall, a composition of grasses and shrubs, rather than trees, as the dominant vegetation type. Temperate grassland regions include the Pampas of Argentina and Uruguay, the steppe of Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Lands referred to as "prairie" tend to be in North America; the term encompasses the area referred to as the Interior Lowlands of Canada, the United States, Mexico, which includes all of the Great Plains as well as the wetter, hillier land to the east. In the U. S. the area is constituted by most or all of the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Oklahoma, sizable parts of the states of Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and western and southern Minnesota. The Palouse of Washington and the Central Valley of California are prairies; the Canadian Prairies occupy vast areas of Manitoba and Alberta. According to Theodore Roosevelt: Prairie is the French word for meadow.
The formation of the North American Prairies started with the uplift of the Rocky Mountains near Alberta. The mountains created a rain shadow; the parent material of most prairie soil was distributed during the last glacial advance that began about 110,000 years ago. The glaciers expanding southward scraped the landscape, picking up geologic material and leveling the terrain; as the glaciers retreated about 10,000 years ago, it deposited this material in the form of till. Wind based loess deposits form an important parent material for prairie soils. Tallgrass prairie evolved over tens of thousands of years with the disturbances of fire. Native ungulates such as bison and white-tailed deer, roamed the expansive, diverse grasslands before European colonization of the Americas. For 10,000-20,000 years, native people used fire annually as a tool to assist in hunting and safety. Evidence of ignition sources of fire in the tallgrass prairie are overwhelmingly human as opposed to lightning. Humans, grazing animals, were active participants in the process of prairie formation and the establishment of the diversity of graminoid and forbs species.
Fire has the effect on prairies of removing trees, clearing dead plant matter, changing the availability of certain nutrients in the soil from the ash produced. Fire kills the vascular tissue of trees, but not prairie species, as up to 75% of the total plant biomass is below the soil surface and will re-grow from its deep roots. Without disturbance, trees will encroach on a grassland and cast shade, which suppresses the understory. Prairie and spaced oak trees evolved to coexist in the oak savanna ecosystem. In spite of long recurrent droughts and occasional torrential rains, the grasslands of the Great Plains were not subject to great soil erosion; the root systems of native prairie grasses held the soil in place to prevent run-off of soil. When the plant died, the fungi, bacteria returned its nutrients to the soil; these deep roots help native prairie plants reach water in the driest conditions. Native grasses suffer much less damage from dry conditions than many farm crops grown. Prairie in North America is split into three groups: wet and dry.
They are characterized by tallgrass prairie, mixed, or shortgrass prairie, depending on the quality of soil and rainfall. In wet prairies, the soil is very moist, including during most of the growing season, because of poor water drainage; the resulting stagnant water is conducive to the formation of fens. Wet prairies have excellent farming soil; the average precipitation is 10–30 inches a year. Mesic prairie good soil during the growing season; this type of prairie is the most converted for agricultural usage. Dry prairie has somewhat wet to dry soil during the growing season because of good drainage in the soil; this prairie can be found on uplands or slopes. Dry soil doesn't get much vegetation due to lack of rain; this is the dominant biome in the Southern Canadian agricultural and climatic region known as Palliser's Triangle. Once thought to be unarable, the Triangle is now one of the most important agricultural regions in Canada thanks to advances in irrigation technology. In addition to its high local importance to Canada, Palliser's Triangle is now one of the most important sources of wheat in the world as a result of these improved methods of watering wheat fields.
Despite these advances in farming technology, the area is still prone to extended periods of drought, which can be disastrous for the industry if it is prolonged. An infamous example of this is the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, which hit much of the United States great plains ecoregion - contributing to the Great Depression. Nomadic hunting has been the main human activity on the prairies for the majority of the archaeological record; this once included many now-extinct species of megafauna. After the other extinction, the main hunted animal on the prairies was the plains bison. Using loud noises and waving large signals, Native peoples would drive bison in fenced pens called to be killed with bows and arrows or spears, or drive them off a cliff, to kill or injure the bison en masse. Th
St. Louis
St. Louis is an independent city and major inland port in the U. S. state of Missouri. It is situated along the western bank of the Mississippi River, which marks Missouri's border with Illinois; the Missouri River merges with the Mississippi River just north of the city. These two rivers combined form the fourth longest river system in the world; the city had an estimated 2017 population of 308,626 and is the cultural and economic center of the St. Louis metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in Missouri, the second-largest in Illinois, the 22nd-largest in the United States. Before European settlement, the area was a regional center of Native American Mississippian culture; the city of St. Louis was founded in 1764 by French fur traders Pierre Laclède and Auguste Chouteau, named after Louis IX of France. In 1764, following France's defeat in the Seven Years' War, the area was ceded to Spain and retroceded back to France in 1800. In 1803, the United States acquired the territory as part of the Louisiana Purchase.
During the 19th century, St. Louis became a major port on the Mississippi River, it separated from St. Louis County in 1877, becoming an independent city and limiting its own political boundaries. In 1904, it hosted the Summer Olympics; the economy of metropolitan St. Louis relies on service, trade, transportation of goods, tourism, its metro area is home to major corporations, including Anheuser-Busch, Express Scripts, Boeing Defense, Energizer, Enterprise, Peabody Energy, Post Holdings, Edward Jones, Go Jet and Sigma-Aldrich. Nine of the ten Fortune 500 companies based in Missouri are located within the St. Louis metropolitan area; this city has become known for its growing medical and research presence due to institutions such as Washington University in St. Louis and Barnes-Jewish Hospital. St. Louis has two professional sports teams: the St. Louis Cardinals of Major League Baseball and the St. Louis Blues of the National Hockey League. One of the city's iconic sights is the 630-foot tall Gateway Arch in the downtown area.
The area that would become St. Louis was a center of the Native American Mississippian culture, which built numerous temple and residential earthwork mounds on both sides of the Mississippi River, their major regional center was at Cahokia Mounds, active from 900 to 1500. Due to numerous major earthworks within St. Louis boundaries, the city was nicknamed as the "Mound City"; these mounds were demolished during the city's development. Historic Native American tribes in the area included the Siouan-speaking Osage people, whose territory extended west, the Illiniwek. European exploration of the area was first recorded in 1673, when French explorers Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette traveled through the Mississippi River valley. Five years La Salle claimed the region for France as part of La Louisiane; the earliest European settlements in the area were built in Illinois Country on the east side of the Mississippi River during the 1690s and early 1700s at Cahokia and Fort de Chartres. Migrants from the French villages on the opposite side of the Mississippi River founded Ste.
Genevieve in the 1730s. In early 1764, after France lost the 7 Years' War, Pierre Laclède and his stepson Auguste Chouteau founded what was to become the city of St. Louis; the early French families built the city's economy on the fur trade with the Osage, as well as with more distant tribes along the Missouri River. The Chouteau brothers gained a monopoly from Spain on the fur trade with Santa Fe. French colonists used African slaves as domestic workers in the city. France, alarmed that Britain would demand French possessions west of the Mississippi and the Missouri River basin after the losing New France to them in 1759–60, transferred these to Spain as part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain; these areas remained in Spanish possession until 1803. In 1780 during the American Revolutionary War, St. Louis was attacked by British forces Native American allies, in the Battle of St. Louis; the founding of St. Louis began in 1763. Pierre Laclede led an expedition to set up a fur-trading post farther up the Mississippi River.
Before Laclede had been a successful merchant. For this reason, he and his trading partner Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent were offered monopolies for six years of the fur trading in that area. Although they were only granted rights to set-up a trading post and other members of his expedition set up a settlement; some historians believe that Laclede's determination to create this settlement was the result of his affair with a married woman Marie-Thérèse Bourgeois Chouteau in New Orleans. Laclede on his initial expedition was accompanied by Auguste Chouteau; some historians still debate. The reason for this lingering question is that all the documentation of the founding was loaned and subsequently destroyed in a fire. For the first few years of St. Louis's existence, the city was not recognized by any of the governments. Although thought to be under the control of the Spanish government, no one asserted any authority over the settlement, thus St. Louis had no local government; this led Laclede to assume a position of civil control, all problems were disposed i
Canal
Canals, or navigations, are human-made channels, or artificial waterways, for water conveyance, or to service water transport vehicles. In most cases, the engineered works will have a series of dams and locks that create reservoirs of low speed current flow; these reservoirs are referred to as slack water levels just called levels. A canal is known as a navigation when it parallels a river and shares part of its waters and drainage basin, leverages its resources by building dams and locks to increase and lengthen its stretches of slack water levels while staying in its valley. In contrast, a canal cuts across a drainage divide atop a ridge requiring an external water source above the highest elevation. Many canals have been built at elevations towering over valleys and other water ways crossing far below. Canals with sources of water at a higher level can deliver water to a destination such as a city where water is needed; the Roman Empire's aqueducts were such water supply canals. A navigation is a series of channels that run parallel to the valley and stream bed of an unimproved river.
A navigation always shares the drainage basin of the river. A vessel uses the calm parts of the river itself as well as improvements, traversing the same changes in height. A true canal is a channel that cuts across a drainage divide, making a navigable channel connecting two different drainage basins. Most commercially important canals of the first half of the 19th century were a little of each, using rivers in long stretches, divide crossing canals in others; this is true for many canals still in use. Both navigations and canals use engineered structures to improve navigation: weirs and dams to raise river water levels to usable depths. Since they cut across drainage divides, canals are more difficult to construct and need additional improvements, like viaducts and aqueducts to bridge waters over streams and roads, ways to keep water in the channel. There are two broad types of canal: Waterways: canals and navigations used for carrying vessels transporting goods and people; these can be subdivided into two kinds:Those connecting existing lakes, other canals or seas and oceans.
Those connected in a city network: such as the Canal Grande and others of Venice Italy. Aqueducts: water supply canals that are used for the conveyance and delivery of potable water for human consumption, municipal uses, hydro power canals and agriculture irrigation. Canals were of immense importance to commerce and the development and vitality of a civilization. In 1855 the Lehigh Canal carried over 1.2 million tons of anthracite coal. The few canals still in operation in our modern age are a fraction of the numbers that once fueled and enabled economic growth, indeed were a prerequisite to further urbanization and industrialization – for the movement of bulk raw materials such as coal and ores are difficult and marginally affordable without water transport; such raw materials fueled the industrial developments and new metallurgy resulting of the spiral of increasing mechanization during 17th–20th century, leading to new research disciplines, new industries and economies of scale, raising the standard of living for any industrialized society.
The surviving canals, including most ship canals, today service bulk cargo and large ship transportation industries, whereas the once critical smaller inland waterways conceived and engineered as boat and barge canals have been supplanted and filled in, abandoned and left to deteriorate, or kept in service and staffed by state employees, where dams and locks are maintained for flood control or pleasure boating. Their replacement was gradual, beginning first in the United States in the mid-1850s where canal shipping was first augmented by began being replaced by using much faster, less geographically constrained & limited, cheaper to maintain railways. By the early 1880s, canals which had little ability to economically compete with rail transport, were off the map. In the next couple of decades, coal was diminished as the heating fuel of choice by oil, growth of coal shipments leveled off. After World War I when motor-trucks came into their own, the last small U. S. barge canals saw a steady decline in cargo ton-miles alongside many railways, the flexibility and steep slope climbing capability of lorries taking over cargo hauling as road networks were improved, which had the freedom to make deliveries well away from rail lined road beds or ditches in the dirt which couldn't operate in the winter.
Canals are built in one of three ways, or a combination of the three, depending on available water and available path: Human made streamsA canal can be created where no stream presently exists. Either the body of the canal is dug or the sides of the canal are created by making dykes or levees by piling dirt, concrete or other building materials; the finished shape of the canal as seen in cross section is known as the canal prism. The water for the canal must be provided like streams or reservoirs. Where the new waterway must change elevation engineering works like locks, lifts or elevators are constructed to raise and lower vessels. Examples include canals that connect valleys over a higher body of land, like Canal du Midi, Canal de Briare and the Panama Canal. A canal can be constructed by dredging a channel in the bottom of an existing lake; when the channel is complete, the lake is drained and the channel becom
