The Cape Cod Canal Turns 100 | New England By the Numbers

1623 year Myles Standish proposed creating a canal separating Cape Cod from the Massachusetts mainland for safer, more efficient travel

291

years until the canal finally opened:July 29, 1914

600+

number of people who drowned in those shipwrecks

Fourteen Thousand

boats now passing through the canal every year

1,750

number of ships wrecked while sailing around the Cape in the 50 years before the canal opened

100×25

feet: the canal’s original width and depth, too narrow and shallow for many ships to pass through

700

number of jobs created during the Great Depression for further construction and improvements

$11,990,000

cost of the canal’s construction in 1914

$21 million

amount spent by the U.S. government between 1935 and 1940 on widening and deepening the canal

20,000,000

cubic yards of earth removed to open the canal in 1914