Traverse Gap Seaway?

Is it at all plausible to have some sort of canal/channelization running through the Traverse Gap in the Dakotas and Minnesota so as to connect Hudson's Bay and the Canadian Prairies to the Mississipi and Gulf of Mexico?
 
Is it at all plausible to have some sort of canal/channelization running through the Traverse Gap in the Dakotas and Minnesota so as to connect Hudson's Bay and the Canadian Prairies to the Mississipi and Gulf of Mexico?

Seems possible on the surface, though how complex of a set of locks you'd need I have no idea. You'd have to canal the Missouri to the Red, I'd think. IIRC the land's pretty flat, though the digging season might be limited.
 
I'm asking myself what the benefit to anybody is...:confused:

It's not opening the ocean to inland traffic, nor shortening the transit time. It makes me thing of the Tennessee-Tombigbee, which looks like another "because we can" project.:rolleyes:
 
I'm asking myself what the benefit to anybody is...:confused:

It's not opening the ocean to inland traffic, nor shortening the transit time. It makes me thing of the Tennessee-Tombigbee, which looks like another "because we can" project.:rolleyes:

Inland waterways are an efficient and capable method of transport that can be used to cheaply ship loads, or to ship loads that would be impractical to ship by other methods (e.g., rocket stages, which are often too large to fit on railroads or roads, but must be moved long distances from factory to launch pad). A huge amount of traffic travels along the Mississippi and its associated river systems, which such a canal would obviously hook into. The Tennessee-Tombigbee, despite being very expensive, does seem to have produce a positive economic return in the long run.

In this case, a cross-Traverse canal would be able to barge material from the Red River valley to the Mississippi and thence into the extremely well-developed transportation network hooking into that, rather than having to move onto railroads for shipment to ports elsewhere. This could possibly make sense, or it could possibly not; I'm not sure how suitable the Red River is for navigation, nor how much in the way of subsidiary works would have to be built to support through-running. But it's not, on the face of it, totally absurd. After all, a large portion of the Mississippi's barge traffic is grain, exactly the sort of thing that is produced in great quantities in the Red River's valley.
 
I'm asking myself what the benefit to anybody is...:confused:
Well the timeline in question would have the full Red River and Mississippi in the same country. (That and they kind of like mega projects for their own sake.)

I'm not sure how suitable the Red River is for navigation

The Red River is usable, and Winnipeg has been doing some major overhauling of their port facilities.

The areas closer to the divide are a little more iffy.
 
Americans have long been plotting how to steal Canada's massive reserves of fresh water. This scheme would help them drain our Prairie Provinces.
Just don't tell the Americans about the billions of gallons of fresh water hidden in the Canadian Arctic. Shhh!
 
The Mississippi can take BIG barges, and the short canal at Chicago allows loads to go from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, and from there to the rest of the world.

The Red River is shallow. You can run shallow barges (like the old shallow draft steamboats), but I don't think you can run much more than that. I suspect the Minnesota River (that's the connexion to the Mississippi it'd use, right?) isn't much better for chunks of its length.

Then, that just gets you to Lake Winnipeg. You'd have to do more canal building/river work through the hard rock of the Precambrian Shield to get to Hudsons Bay (the ocean), and THEN that's only useful a couple of months a year.



In an ATL where OTL's Canadian Prairies are part of the US, such works on the Red would make a LOT of sense. OTL, not so much.
 

Driftless

Donor
The Red River is shallow. You can run shallow barges (like the old shallow draft steamboats), but I don't think you can run much more than that. I suspect the Minnesota River (that's the connexion to the Mississippi it'd use, right?) isn't much better for chunks of its length.

The Minnesota River is navigagle by barges for only a short distance from it's junction with the Mississippi (Savage, MN a Minneapolis suburb). The rest is pretty narrow and shallow. Even then, the Minnesota River barge traffic is typically one or two barges and a towboat at a time, not the larger 3x4 combos of the upper reaches of the Mississippi, or the even larger combinations farther down river below the lock & dam system.
 
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