Existing comment:
Unloading tusks at factory in Ivoryton, Connecticut, 1890
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 gradually made it faster and cheaper to import tusks from a range of ports in Indian and Europe rather than directly from East Africa. Tusks arrived from abroad in New York, then moved by smaller ships to Essex, Connecticut, and finally overland by wagons like this one to the ivory factories of the Connecticut River Valley. |