A detailed and richly illustrated history.

To create this unprecedented collection of photographs and essays, the authors spent years visiting museums and archives, and interviewed Lake Erie experts, from professional historians to longtime residents. The result is Lake Erie a remarkable portrait of daily life, industry and commerce on this dynamic Great Lake.

The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 connected the Hudson River to the Great Lakes and unleashed the financial potential of the American interior. The industrialists who located factories with ready access to raw materials soon became legends: Rockefeller, Henry Wells and William Fargo, Sherwin and Williams, Charles Brush and Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, B.F. Goodrich, Carnegie, Frick, Westinghouse and Mellon.

The book is divided into chapters covering:

• The lake's prehistory
• Early settlement
• Role in the American Revolution
• Economic boom from 1815 to 1880
• High Industrial period from 1880 to 1945
• History of dramatic storms, shipwrecks
• Role in the Underground Railroad and Prohibition
• Wealth of flora and fauna