Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and Towpath

Chesapeake and Ohio Canal
....Celebrates Its 158th Birthday in 2008

The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities presents PandaMania

Picture taken August 8, 2004 at the Washington Harbor
in Georgetown (The J=Hike that Saved the C and O Canal Panda)

Canal News and Events:

April 23 - The Yockatomac Trek is a resource for planning your bike trip from Pittsburgh to Washington.
April 6 - Captain Pearl R. Nye: Life on the Ohio and Erie Canal - new online Library of Congress exhibit.
2006
October 21 - Added little video about the Antietam Aqueduct
October 15 John Urman video about the canal
October 13 Link added to a little video of the path down from the SHepherdstown Bridge to the towpath.
October 10 - Link added to Catoctin Aqueduct
April 8 - Potomac Clean-up
December 16 - The C & O Canal Hits the Coffee Table - story on WAMU about a new book about the canal: The C&O Canal: From Great National Project to National Historical Park (see 5th story on page)
July 19 - C and O in a day
June 6 - Afghan Girls Fund Charity Slog - due into DC around June 9 (walking from Frostburg to DC with one teabag...)
February 15 - Save the C&O Canal a new website - whose mission is to protect the Washington D.C. section of the C&O Canal National Historical Park from private development
February 9 - Announcement of Canal Awareness Day in Poolesville on May 7.
January 21 - There's a page starting for GPS coordinates of points of interest along the canal.
September 6 - Added a link to Tom's Bike Tours
May 30 - A tale of flying mud, beer, attack geese and history Biking the C&O Canal Towpath - Roanoke Times
May 2 - Hikers trace famous steps - Washington Times
April 29 - Searching the LOC, I discovered this film from 1917: Down the old Potomac (Film is online.)
April 26 - Walkers in step on canal heritage - Herald-Mail
April 25 - Trek along canal continues - Herald-Mail
April 24 - Following Douglas' footsteps Hikers traversing entire length of C&O Canal - Herald-Mail
April 23 - Neglect imperils 'a treasure' C&O Canal: National park suffers from unrepaired flood damage and other ills, including a huge budget deficit - Baltimore Sun
April 19 - Hikers assemble along C&O Canal - Herald-Mail
April 18 - Tracing Douglas's Pioneering Footsteps, 50 Years Later - Post
April 17 - Up the River Without a Paddle - Joel Achenbach story in the Post.
March 14 - A hike for all time - Morning Herald
Coming April 18, 2004 Info from the C and O Canal Association 50th Anniversary Douglas Hike and from the NPS
Janury 4, 2004 - There's a new book of old canal photos.
, by Mary Rubin published in November 2003
December 1 - There's a new novel with the C and O Canal used as its setting: Between Rail and River by James Rada, Jr.
October 28 - Runner treads length of canal - Herald-Mail
October 16 - There are several old photographs of the canal in the new Western Maryland Historical Library website.
July 13 A Boathouse Plan That Should Be Scuttled - letter to the editor
May 24 - There's a new organization called Friends of the Shepherdstown Riverfront which hopes to restore the old tobacco warehouse in Shepherdstown.
April 5 - New book about the C and O is now available. "Discovering the C and O Canal" by Mark Sabatke.
March 18 - Glenn Bock sent me the URL for a page he's made which shows the topos and terraserver pictures for all the mileage points along the canal.
February 27 - Middle Potomac Scenic Corridor chosen as a "Last Chance Landscape" real-audio story about this on Metro Connection program
February 12 - A Survival of an Era article from the March 1940 Regional Review
February 12 - Map of the Country Through Which a Canal to Connect the Waters of the Chesapeake and Ohio is Proposed to Pass - from the Maryland Historical Society
February 12 C and O Canal Currency from 1840
October 11 - Antietam Aqueduct is a "locationless" geocache.
September 24 - Monocacy Aqueduct restoration project begins - article in Gazette
July 18 - Eel deal is also good for dams and tourists - article in Herald-Mail
June 24 - Added a link to 19TH CENTURY U.S. CANALS - An Index of Web Sites
May 10 Found a page for the Potomac Trail Council
May 5 America's River: From Washington and Jefferson to the Army Corps of Engineers, everyone had grandiose plans to tame the Potomac. Fortunately for us, they all failed article in May 5 Washington Post Magazine
May 1 Die-hard Bethesda canal walker retires after 30 years - just discovered this article from April 3
3-11 Tom Fremantle is traveling from Texas to New York following in the footsteps of an ancestor who made the trek during the Civil War. He would have liked to use a bit of the towpath on his journey, but the stairs at Harpers Ferry were an obstacle for his traveling companion.
2-12 A Watershed Radio page about the Canal.
1-30 Sonny Windstrup's amazing collection of C&O photos: http://www.kobotica.com/online/features/candoc/canal.tour/
Coming up: June 24-27, 2002 Canal Bicycle Tour led by Suzie & Roger Knable
12-13 Gods and Generals filming done - Herald-Mail
11-30 Discovered an article about the Canal from 1998 by Maria Longo-Swiek. And also discovered new book about the Canal to be available in Spring 2002. (page does not work with my favorite browser, Opera) Also found a link for the Alexandria Canal.
The C & O Canal is a 184 mile long National Historical Park. It begins in Washington, D.C. and follows the Potomac River to Cumberland, Maryland. Construction of the Canal began in on July 4, 1828, the same day the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was begun. Construction eventually stopped in 1850 when it reached Cumberland. The original idea was for it to go much further west, but the competition from railroads had not been foreseen when the canal was originally planned. It finally began making some profits in the 1870's but at the end of the next decade, a massive flood caused the Canal Company to go into receivership to its rival, the B & O Railroad. The railroad operated the Canal for several decades until another devastating flood in 1924 at which time the Canal was closed for good.
In 1938, the 184 mile long stretch of property was acquired by the Federal Government for $2 million and put in the domain of the National Park Service. The Service decided it would make a perfect Parkway - an attractive approach to the city of Washington. However, such was not to be. Justice William Douglas of the Supreme Court reviled the thought of the destruction of the beautiful river corridor. He challenged the editor of the Washington Post, who had come out in favor of the proposed construction, to walk the entire towpath and then decide whether he still thought the road project idea was a good one. The editor agreed to Douglas's proposition, and after completing the hike came out with an editorial in favor of saving the natural beauty of the river and dispensing with the highway. Public opinion turned towards keeping the land natural, and in 1971 it was designated the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park.

Locks and Aqueducts
During the course of its 184 miles, the canal had to climb a little over 600 feet. This was accomplished through a series of 74 liftlocks, each of which would raise or lower a canalboat about 8 feet to the next level of the canal, a procedure which generally took about ten minutes. Besides liftlocks, a number of river feeder and guard locks also had to be constructed. These locks allowed water from the river to flow in and out of the canal as needed. The guardlocks also served to protect the canal during flood periods.
Other structures that had to be built as a part of the canal were culverts and aqueducts. To enable the canal to cross relatively small streams, over 150 culverts were built. The crossing of major streams required the construction of 11 aqueducts.
One of these, the Monocacy Aqueduct, at mile 42, is thought by many to be the most beautiful feature of the canal. Constructed of pink and white quartz sandstone quarried from the base of nearby Sugarloaf Mountain, the aqueduct withstood Confederate attempts to blow it up during the Civil War. More recently, it suffered extensive damage during 1972's Hurricane Agnes. While it underwent extensive repair work to save it following that flood, it is still in great need of further major repairs if it is to be saved for posterity. A joint campaign to save the Monocacy is in the works.

Cargo and Mules...
The boats that plied the Canal typically carried cargoes of coal, flour or grain, and made the trip from Cumberland to Georgetown in four or five days. They used teams of two or three mules, working in six hour shifts. The canalboats generally had crews of five, often all members of the same family. If there were young children living aboard the boats, they would be tethered to the boat to prevent accidents.
The Canal Today
Parts of the Canal have been rewatered and other towns along its path are hoping to do the same in the future, but in the meantime, much of the bed of the Canal is filled with trees and shrubs. Since the Canal has been out of operation since the '20's, some of them have had time to reach quite a considerable size, especially the Sycamores. You can also see smaller trees such as Pawpaws (the fruits of which may someday soon appear in local supermarkets!) and bushes such as Spicebushes, which are very noticeable in the early spring with their small clusters of yellow flowers that appear before the leaves. These and many other trees and shrubs cause countless visitors to the park to ask: "How did the boats get through the canal with all those trees there?"
The Canal Towpath is now a very popular spot for walking, biking and horseback riding. And in Georgetown and at Great Falls, you can go for canalboat rides.

For more information, contact:
C & O Canal Headquarters
1850 Dual Highway, Suite 100
Hagerstown, MD 21740
(301) 739-4200
Visitors' Centers
Cumberland - (301) 722-8226
Hancock - (301) 678-5463
Williamsport - (301)582-0813
Great Falls - (301) 299-3613
Georgetown - (202) 653-5190

You may also be interested in joining the C and O Canal Association. They publish a quarterly newsletter entitled Along the Towpath. This organization is devoted to the preservation of the Canal and Park. Its members recently donated a new mule named Lil to the Park. You can write to them at:
P.O. Box 366
Glen Echo, Maryland 20812
Or call them at: (301) 983-0825

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|Here is Volume I of the guestbook. | And the more recent Volume 2 |
Note: This is a different guestbook than the one on the Appalachian Trail page.
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This page was written by Kathy Bilton, Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and was begun in March, 1995. Most recent update: February 2002. The URL: http://www.fred.net/kathy/canal.html

Locks and Aqueducts

Cargo and Mules...

The Canal Today