Chesapeake and Ohio Canal
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, abbreviated as the C&O Canal and occasionally called the Grand Old Ditch, operated from 1831 until 1924 along the Potomac River between Washington, D.C., and Cumberland, Maryland. It replaced the Patowmack Canal, which shut down completely in 1828, and could operate during months in which the water level was too low for the former canal. The canal's principal cargo was coal from the Allegheny Mountains.
Construction began in 1828 on the canal and ended in 1850 with the completion of a stretch to Cumberland, although the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad had already reached Cumberland in 1842. The canal had an elevation change of which required 74 canal locks, 11 aqueducts to cross major streams, more than 240 culverts to cross smaller streams, and the Paw Paw Tunnel. A planned section to the Ohio River in Pittsburgh was never built.
The canal is now maintained as the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park, with a trail that follows the old towpath.
History
Early river projects
After the American Revolutionary War, George Washington was the chief advocate of using waterways to connect the Eastern Seaboard to the Great Lakes and the Ohio River, which flows into the Mississippi River and ultimately to the Gulf of Mexico at New Orleans. In 1785, Washington founded the Potowmack Company to improve the navigability of the Potomac River. His company built five skirting canals around the major falls: Little Falls, which was later incorporated in the C&O Canal, Great Falls in Virginia, Seneca Falls opposite Violette's lock, Payne's Falls of the Shenandoah, and House's Falls near Harpers Ferry. These canals allowed an easy downstream float; upstream journeys, propelled by pole, were harder.Several kinds of watercraft were used on the Patowmack Canal and in the Potomac River. Gondolas were log rafts, usually sold at journey's end for their wood by their owners, who returned upstream on foot. Sharpers were flat-bottomed boats,, usable only on high-water days, about 45 days per year.
Construction
Planning
The Erie Canal, built between 1817 and 1825, threatened traders south of New York City, who began to seek their own transportation infrastructure to link the burgeoning areas west of the Appalachian Mountains to mid-Atlantic markets and ports. In 1820, plans began being made for a canal to link the Ohio River and Chesapeake Bay.In early March 1825, President James Monroe signed the bill chartering the construction of the C&O Canal as one of the last acts of his presidency. The plan was to build it in two sections, the eastern section from the tidewater of Washington, D.C., to Cumberland, Maryland; and the western section over the Allegheny Mountains to the Ohio River or one of its tributaries. Free from taxation, the canal company was required to have in use in five years, and to complete the canal in 12 years. The canal was engineered to have a water current, supplying the canal and assisting mules pulling boats downstream.
The eastern section was the only part to be completed.
On October 23, 1826, the engineers submitted the study, presenting the proposed canal route in three sections. The eastern section comprised Georgetown to Cumberland; the middle section, Cumberland to the confluence of the Casselman River and the Youghiogheny River; and the western section from there to Pittsburgh.
| Section | Distance | Ascent & Descent | # of Locks | Cost |
| Eastern | 185 Mi 1078 Yds | 578 Feet | 74 | $8,177,081.05 |
| Middle | 70 Mi 1010 Yds | 1961 Feet | 246 | $10,028,122.86 |
| Western | 85 Mi 348 Yds | 619 Feet | 78 | $4,170,223.78 |
| Total: | 341 Mi 676 Yds | 3158 Feet | 398 | $22,375,427.69 |
The total estimated price tag, more than $22 million, dampened the enthusiasm of many supporters, who were expecting an estimate in the $4 million to $5 million range. At a convention in December 1826, they attempted to discredit the engineers' report, and offered lower estimates: Georgetown to Cumberland, $5,273,283; Georgetown to Pittsburgh, $13,768,152. Geddes and Roberts were hired to make another report, which they gave in 1828: $4,479,346.93 for Georgetown to Cumberland. With those numbers to encourage them, the stockholders formally organized the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company in June 1828. In the end, the final construction cost to Cumberland in 1850 was $11,071,075.21. Compared to the original cost given by the engineers in 1826 of about $8 million, removing things not in the estimate such as land purchases, engineering expenses, incidental damages, salaries, and fencing provision, the cost overrun was about 19%, which can be justified by the inflation rate of the period. The cost overrun of the other proposal was about 51% thus showing that the original engineer's estimate was good.
In 1824, the holdings of the Patowmack Company were ceded to the Chesapeake and Ohio Company. By 1825, the Canal Company was authorized by an act of the General Assembly of Maryland in the amount of subscriptions of $500,000; this paved the way for future investments and loans. According to historians, those financial resources were expended until the State had prostrated itself on its own credit.
Groundbreaking
The C&O's first chief engineer was Benjamin Wright, formerly chief engineer of the Erie Canal. A groundbreaking ceremony was held on July 4, 1828, attended by U.S. president John Quincy Adams. The ceremony was held near Georgetown, at the canal's eventual mark near Lock 6, the upstream end of the Little Falls skirting canal, and Dam No. 1.At the groundbreaking, there was still argument over the eastern end of the canal. The directors thought that Little Falls was sufficient since that literally fulfilled the charter's condition of reaching the tidewater, but people in Washington wanted it to end in Washington, connecting to the Tiber Creek and Anacostia river. For that reason, the canal originally opened from Little Falls to Seneca, and the next year, was extended down to Georgetown.
The Little Falls skirting canal, which was part of the Patowmack Canal, was dredged to increase its depth from, and became part of the C&O Canal.
The first president of the canal, Charles F. Mercer, insisted on perfection since this was a work of national importance. This would cost the company more money to build the canal. During his term, he forbade the use of slackwaters for navigation, the use of composite locks, or reduction of the cross section of the canal prism in difficult terrain. This reduced maintenance expenditures but increased construction costs. In the end, two slackwaters and multiple composite locks were built.
At first, the canal company planned to use steamboats in the slackwaters, since without mules, the canal boats had to use oars to move upstream. After much discussion of the dangers of early steamboats, the company provided a towpath so that the mules could pull the boats through the slackwaters.
Section numbers and contracts
From Lock 5 at Little Falls to Cumberland, the canal was divided into three divisions, each of which was further divided into 120 sections of about. A separate construction contract was issued for each section. Locks, culverts, dams, etc. were listed on the contracts by section number, not by mileage as is done today. For instance, Locks 5 and 6 are on Section No. 1, all the way to Guard Lock No. 8 on section 367. Sections A–H were in the Georgetown level below lock 5First part opened
In November 1830, the canal opened from Little Falls to Seneca. The Georgetown section opened the following year.Dispute for Point of Rocks; second part opened
In 1828, the C&O Canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad began fighting for sole use of the narrow strip of available land along the Potomac River from Point of Rocks to Harpers Ferry. After a Maryland state court battle that involved Daniel Webster and Roger B. Taney, the companies agreed to share the right-of-way.In August 1829, the canal company began importing indentured laborers to Alexandria and Georgetown. These workers were promised meat three times a day, vegetables, and a "reasonable allowance of whiskey", $8 to $12 per month, $20 for masons. Still, many were dissatisfied with the slave-like conditions. Friction between the largest groups, from Ireland and Germany, meant they had to be kept in different crews.
The width of the canal prism above Harpers Ferry was reduced to, which saved money and was also appropriate from an engineering standpoint.
In 1830, Francis Scott Key left his Georgetown home due to the newly opened canal, which ran through his back garden.
In 1832, the canal company prohibited liquor in a bid to improve the speed of construction, but soon repealed its ban.
In August or September 1832, an epidemic of cholera swept through the construction camps, killing many workers and leading others to throw down their tools and flee.
By 1833, the canal's Georgetown end was extended eastward to Tiber Creek, near the western terminus of the Washington City Canal, which extended through the future National Mall to the foot of the United States Capitol. A lock keeper's house at the eastern end of this Washington Branch of the C&O Canal remains at the southwest corner of Constitution Avenue and 17th Street, N.W., at the edge of the National Mall.
In 1834, the section to Harper's Ferry opened and the canal reached Williamsport.
In 1836, the canal was used by canal packets as a Star Route to carry mail from Georgetown to Shepherdstown. The contract was held by Albert Humrickhouse at $1,000 per annum for a daily service of 72 book miles. The canal approached Hancock, Maryland, by 1839.
In March 1837, three surveys were made for a possible link to the northeast to Baltimore: via Westminster, via Monocacy-Linganore, and via Seneca, but they were all deemed impractical due to lack of water at the summit level.
The Canal reached Dam No. 6 in 1839.
As the canal approached Hancock, more construction problems surfaced. Limestone sinkholes and caverns caused the canal bottom to cave in near Shepherdstown, near Two Locks above Dam No. 4, around Four Locks, Big pool, and Roundtop Hill near Dam No. 6. On 6 December 1839, Chief Engineer Fisk wrote, "These breaks have all evidently been occasioned by limestone sinks which exhibit themselves by a falling down of the bottom of the Canal into limestone caverns that are lower than, and extend out under the bed of the river: — in consequence of which the water from the Canal is at first conducted down below the canal bottom perhaps twenty or thirty feet and thence out along under the bed of the river... It has been a matter of surprise to me that our Canal thus far has suffered so little from limesinks. We may yet however have much trouble from this source near and above the breach at Lock No. 37. For about a mile, there is scarcely a hundred feet in length of the canal in which there are not several small lime sink holes...". He recommended costly but necessary repairs, which were done by 1840.
Since it was difficult to obtain stone for the locks, engineers built composite locks, sometimes of kyanized wood.
In 1843, the Potomac Aqueduct Bridge was built near the present-day Francis Scott Key Bridge to connect the canal to the Alexandria Canal, which led to Alexandria, Virginia.
In April 1843, floods damaged much of the finished portion of the canal between Georgetown and Harpers Ferry, including the Shenandoah river lock. One flood suspended navigation for 103 days. The company raised the embankments around Little Falls, and made a "tumbling waste" near the 4-mile marker.