As you may have noticed, Akron isn’t a seaport. That could have changed if an ambitious 19th century proposal for the Ohio & Erie Canal hadn’t been ditched.At the time the United States was considering building a canal between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts in Panama or Nicaragua, the federal government studied the feasibility of digging a ship channel between Lake Erie and the Ohio River.One of the suggested routes — a 150-mile project between Cleveland and Marietta — would have gone through Akron, widening and deepening the north-south canal to accommodate larger vessels.