Question: What Canal allows a navigable water route from New York City to the Great Lakes and was created shortly after Blackstone River Valley?
Context: The Valley Falls Mill is an historic textile mill complex on Broad Street in Central Falls, Rhode Island.  The complex consists of the primary mill building, a large Italianate brick four-story building erected in 1849, several outbuildings.  a dam across the Blackstone River, and a portion of the original canal system which provided water power to the mill.  The outbuildings include the gatehouse controlling waterflow into the canals, a small stuccoed office building now serving as a retail establishment, and a brick bath house built c. 1870 that stands just south of the mill race.  The complex originally had a second mill building and power canal; that building was destroyed by fire, and its canal was filled in.  The main mill building was developed as housing in the late 1970s, including a sympathetic replacement for the second mill building. Historic Sayre Yard, named after the chief Engineer and first Superintendent of the Lehigh Valley Railroad (LV) was established across the stateline in 1876 in Waverly, New York and Sayre, Pennsylvania.  The large yard, and the purpose built company town, Sayre, Pennsylvania were founded as part of a planned program of expansion and extension to the young railroad's infrastructure—the yard was but one benchmark on the way to completing the goal of establishing competitive passenger rail service between New York City, as well as cities in Delaware such as Wilmington, cities in central New Jersey such as Trenton, and Eastern Pennsylvania cities including Philadelphia with Chicago and other Great Lakes Cities via Buffalo, New York.  The Lehigh Valley was primarily first and foremost a coal road which transported high grade Anthracite to the big cities of the east and to steel mills along the Great Lakes and to the area in and around Chicago.  The yard is a way point along the historic rail corridor that extends along the left bank Susquehanna River through the RBMN Duryea Yard and Mountain Top Yards down along the route of the historic Lehigh Canal and across the Delaware at Easton, Pennsylvania. The Woonsocket Company Mill Complex (also known as Hemond, Inc., Woonsocket Weaving Co., Blackstone Valley Electric) is a historic district encompassing one of the largest mill complexes in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.  The district includes all of the buildings historically associated with the Woonsocket Company, a major manufacturer of cotton textiles in the 19th century.  The complex is located along the eastern bank of the Blackstone River between Court and Bernon Streets.  It includes three handsome stone mills, built between 1827 and 1859, and a power plant that was built on the site of the former #3 mill between 1890 and 1920, as well as the remnants of the canal that originally carried water to the buildings for power. The Blackstone River and Canal Heritage State Park is a part of the state park system of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, managed by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR).  This 1000 acre park "recalls the role of canals in transporting raw materials and manufactured goods between emerging industrial centers."  The Blackstone River and Canal Heritage State Park at Uxbridge, Massachusetts, is the midpoint of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor of the National Park System.  The Blackstone River and Valley is where the industrial revolution was born in America.  The southern entrance to this state park is the site of the historic Stanley Woolen Mill, currently being redeveloped for commercial and tourism.  The Native American Nipmuc name for the village here was "Wacentug", translated as "bend in the river". The Blackstone Viaduct, or the New York & New England Railroad Viaduct is a historic viaduct in Blackstone, Massachusetts.  The viaduct was built in 1872 by the Boston, Hartford and Erie Railroad and the American Bridge Company.  The viaduct is 1600 ft long structure, consisting of masonry arches and earthen embankments in the Massachusetts portion of the village of Waterford.  It runs from the Blackstone River in the east to a still-watered section of the defunct Blackstone Canal to the west.  The most prominent portion of the structure is an 800-foot earthen embankment running west from the river that is 25 ft high, and then a 375 ft multiple-arch masonry bridge constructed out of granite which was sheathed in concrete in 1918.  The structure was built as part of a project by the Boston, Hartford and Erie to build a complete run between New York City and Boston. The Central Woolen Mills District is a historic district in Uxbridge, Massachusetts.  The centerpiece of this historic district is the Stanley Woolen Mill, aka Central Woolen Mill, built by Moses Taft in 1852, and earlier by his father, Luke Taft, in 1833, on the banks of the Blackstone Canal.  The District is also the southern entrance to the Blackstone River and Canal Heritage State Park.  This parkland is the geographic center of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, an historic corridor of national significance as are of the earliest industrial activity of the United States. Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park is a National Park Service unit in the states of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.  The park was created for the purpose of preserving, protecting, and interpreting the industrial heritage of the Blackstone River Valley and the urban, rural, and agricultural landscape of that region.  The Blackstone River Valley was the site of some of the earliest successful textile mills in the United States, and these mills contributed significantly to the earliest American Industrial Revolution.  The subsequent construction of the Blackstone Canal, a few years after the successful completion of the Erie Canal, helped to sustain the region's industrial strength. The Illinois River is a principal tributary of the Mississippi River, approximately 273 mi long, in the U.S. state of Illinois.  The river drains a large section of central Illinois, with a drainage basin of 28756.6 sqmi .  The drainage basin extends into Wisconsin and Indiana.  This river was important among Native Americans and early French traders as the principal water route connecting the Great Lakes with the Mississippi.  The French colonial settlements along the river formed the heart of the area known as the Illinois Country.  After the construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal and the Hennepin Canal in the 19th century, the role of the river as link between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi was extended into the era of modern industrial shipping.  It now forms the basis for the Illinois Waterway. The Erie Canal is a canal in New York that is part of the east–west, cross-state route of the New York State Canal System (formerly known as the New York State Barge Canal).  Originally, it ran 363 mi from Albany, on the Hudson River, to Buffalo, at Lake Erie.  It was built to create a navigable water route from New York City and the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes.  When completed in 1825, it was the second longest canal in the world (after the Grand Canal in China) and greatly affected the development and economy of New York, New York City, and the United States. The Karakum Canal (Qaraqum Canal, Kara Kum Canal, Garagum Canal; Russian: Каракумский канал , "Karakumsky Kanal", Turkmen: Garagum kanaly , گَرَگوُم كَنَلیٛ, "Гарагум каналы") in Turkmenistan is one of the largest irrigation and water supply canals in the world.  Started in 1954, and completed in 1988, it is navigable over much of its 1375 km length, and carries 13 km3 of water annually from the Amu-Darya River across the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan.  The canal opened up huge new tracts of land to agriculture, especially to cotton monoculture heavily promoted by the Soviet Union, and supplying Ashgabat with a major source of water.  Unfortunately, the primitive construction of the canal allows almost 50 percent of the water to escape en route, creating lakes and ponds along the canal, and a rise in groundwater leading to widespread soil salinization problems.  The canal is also a major factor leading to the Aral Sea environmental disaster.
Answer: Erie Canal