Navigable Canals in America

American Navigable Canal Itineraries

Illinois and Michigan, Wabash and Erie, Erie Canal, Delaware and Hudson, Chesapeake and Ohio, Chesapeake and Delaware

European and English canal systems proved the feasibility of inland waterway transport and provided fine examples to be improved upon. As the need for improved inland transportation became obvious for westward expansion, America plunged into an era of canal building activity.

The Illinois and Michigan Canal connected the Mississippi and Great Lakes Basins. making
agriculture in northern Illinois profitable by opening-up connections to eastern markets and leading to the creation of Chicago. Chicago was the eastern and LaSalle the western terminus with the latter becoming a transshipment point from canal boats originating in Chicago to steamboats heading for St Louis and New Orleans.

A Cultural Meeting Point between North and South

Canal and Steamboat basins were located at locks 14 and 15 with New Orleans steamboats unloading molasses, sugar, coffee, fresh oranges and lemons whereas the Chicago cargo included lumber, stoves, wagons, and the latest clothing styles from the east.

Mastery of the American Mid-Continent

The Wabash and Erie Canal provided traders with access from the Great Lakes to the Ohio River; 460 miles long, it was the longest canal ever built in North America. The waterway was a combination of four canals: the Miami and Erie, the original Wabash and Erie from Junction to Terre Haute, Indiana, the Cross-Cut Canal from Terre Haute to Point Commerce, and the Central Canal from Worthington to Evansville.  

The Wabash & Erie Canal Association is dedicated to Indiana's canal heritage. The center serves as a physical focus of a 2.5-mile (4.0 km) segment of the canal that has been rebuilt and reopened as a waterway and parallel towpath.

Syracuse New York and the Erie Canal Museum Syracuse stands at the northeast corner of the Finger Lakes region and is a city comprised of many neighborhoods which were originally villages that joined the city over the years. Land to the north of town is generally flat while land to the south is hilly.

A major Crossroads for two Centuries with the Erie Canal and a Rail Network

The Erie Canal Museum is dedicated to preserving the 1850 National Register Weigh Lock Building, the last remaining structure of its kind, and to telling the incredible adventure story of the Erie Canal. The collections of the Erie Canal Museum consist of nearly 60,000 artifacts, covering a wide variety of items reflecting the culture of the 19th and early 20th centuries in upstate New York.

The Delaware and Hudson Canal a British blockade preceding the War of 1812, which cut off the supply of imported bituminous coal, led to the commercial development of Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal fields. The 108-mile 108-lock waterway operated from 1828 until 1898 transforming the economic landscape, as towns and villages sprang up along its route, and industries developed to exploit local resources such as lumber, agricultural products, and bluestone.  

The D&H Canal Historical Society maintains a Canal Museum and Five Locks Walk trail to preserve canal-era artifacts, and document the canal’s creation, operation, and importance as an engine of economic development in the region and beyond.

The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal operated from 1831 until 1924 along the Potomac from Washington, D.C., to Cumberland, Maryland. Construction on the 184.5-mile (296.9 km) course began in 1828 and ended in 1850 with the completion of a 50-mile stretch to Cumberland, rising and falling over an
elevation change of 605 feet (184 meters) that required 74 locks. In 1938, the abandoned canal was obtained by the United States and is now the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal national historic park.

Boatmen and their families were an independent lot often intermarrying within their own group. They frequently fought amongst each other and with lockkeepers over company rules. During winter when the boats were tied up, they lived in their own communities away from others. One boat captain observed that on the canal, women and children were as good as the men.

The Chesapeake & Delaware Canal is 14 miles long, 450 feet wide and 35 feet deep across Maryland and Delaware, connecting the Delaware River with Chesapeake Bay. The C&D Canal is owned and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Philadelphia District, and is the sole major commercial navigation waterway in the United States built during the early 1800s still in use.

The C&D Canal Museum in Chesapeake City provides visitors with a glimpse of the canal’s early days. The steam engines are the oldest of their type in America still on their original foundations.

The Delaware City Historic District is significant for its architecture, for its beginnings as a planned settlement, and for its importance as a nineteenth century canal-oriented transportation center. The town was envisioned by its backers as a place that would develop into a major shipping and trading point for traffic that passed along this trans-peninsular trade route, and so, its early plans were based on the completion of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.

The Delaware City Historic District

The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal and New Castle County Architecture

The Delaware City Historic District is significant for its architecture, for its beginnings as a planned settlement, and for its importance as a nineteenth century canal-oriented transportation center. The buildings within the district date from 1826, the year the town was laid out, displaying significant development through 1930. The town was envisioned by its backers as a place that would develop into a major shipping and trading point for traffic that passed along this trans-peninsular trade route, and so, its early plans were based on the completion of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.

Delaware City is located 14 miles south of Wilmington, the largest city in Delaware, and 40 miles south of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The built area of town is roughly bounded by the Delaware City Branch of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal on the east, the Delaware River on the north, Dragon Creek on the west, and Delaware Route 9 on the south.

Located within the limits of an incorporated town of approximately 1,800 people that is situated in the eastern central area of New Castle County, Delaware, the town is strategically located at the eastern terminus of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal where it joins the Delaware River.

The 68-acre district is made up of 252 sites that include 232 major buildings

East of the canal branch, but outside the boundaries of the district, is Polktown, a small community that was settled by free Blacks in the 1830's, and the Fort duPont site, established in 1863 as an auxiliary gun battery, later used as the headquarters for the Delaware River and Bay Defenses during WWI and WWII.  

An important feature of the economy of Delaware City is the expanse of marshland bordering parts of the canal, the river, and the creek that harbored substantial game bird and muskrat populations. Much of the outlying area beyond the marsh was highly productive agricultural land during the nineteenth century and is still so used.

Three related National Register sites are located just outside the district:

1. Eastern Lock of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal

2. Fort Delaware, a Civil War Prison located on an island in the Delaware River.

3. Chelsea, an 1848 brick, Greek Revival style dwelling built for Thomas Jefferson Clark, member of one of the leading families in the area.

Architecture

Delaware City's main emphasis is on buildings of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, its greatest period of growth. Several of the earliest buildings in town are brick Federal style dwellings. The accepted plan was a two-story, gable-roofed, double dwelling with a symmetrical four-bay facade and fanlights above the entrances.

The most prominent house type of the mid-nineteenth century is the Greek Revival style. Based strictly on the two or two-and-a-half story, flat-roofed, square plan, there are no temple front or cross wing versions of this style in Delaware City or in its environs. 

The Italianate style did not bring about much of a change in Delaware City's architecture since it was based on the same flat-roofed, square plan as the Greek Revival style. Because of the subtle difference between the Greek Revival and Italianate styles, features from both styles were sometimes combined, creating a transition between the two. The Queen Anne and Bungalow styles became prevalent in the twentieth century.

Historic Towns on the Maryland Eastern Shore

Saint Michaels Chestertown Cambridge Salisbury and Oxford

The Eastern Shore of Maryland is comprised of nine counties with a population of nearly 450 thousand. The term Eastern Shore distinguishes a territorial part of the State from the land west of Chesapeake Bay.

The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal was a shallow canal with locks after its construction in 1829; it was deepened in the early 20^th century to sea level. The north-south section of the Mason-Dixon Line forms the border between Maryland and Delaware. The border was originally marked every mile by a stone, and every five miles by a crownstone. It was surveyed as a compromise solution to a century-long wrangle between the Penn and Calvert families. Commercial east-west ties between Delaware and Maryland towns were culturally significant in Colonial and Early American periods despite the border line. Trade with Philadelphia was conducted by overland routes to Delaware towns like Smyrna and Odessa; these cultural connections continue to this day.

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Saint Michaels derives its name from the Episcopal Parish established in 1677 which attracted settlers that grew tobacco and engaged in shipbuilding. The town's tourist industry has roots in the 19^th century with steamboats from Baltimore and summer guest cottages opening for weeklong rentals. The opening of the maritime museum in 1965, waterfront activities and historic bay vessels added further impetus to travel and vacations to the town.

Chestertown was founded in 1706 and achieved prominence as one of six Royal Ports of Entry becoming Maryland’s second port after Annapolis and second to the State Capital in the number of 18^th century mansions owned by a flourishing merchant class along the Chester River waterfront. In May 1774, five months after the British closed the port of Boston after the Boston Tea Party, the citizens of Chestertown wrote a set of resolves that prohibited the buying, selling, or drinking of tea. Based on these resolves, a popular legend has it that the citizens held their own tea party on the Chester River, in an act of colonial defiance.

The Chestertown Tea Party Festival celebrates Chestertown's colonial heritage with a weekend of events with colonial music and dance, fife and drum performances, puppet shows, colonial crafts demonstrations and sales, military drills, and a walking tour of the historic district. In the afternoon, re-enactors board the schooner Sultana and tea is thrown into the Chester River.

The US Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic States

Cambridge was settled by English colonists in 1684 who developed farming on the Eastern Shore. The largest plantations were devoted first to tobacco, and then mixed farming. The town was a trading center and later a stop on the Underground Railroad, an extensive network of safe houses for slaves escaping to the north. Cambridge developed food processing industries in the late 19^th century, canning oysters, tomatoes and sweet potatoes.  Main Street is a comprehensive downtown revitalization process created by the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development with a focus on heritage tourism.

Salisbury is the largest town on the Eastern Shore and the commercial hub of the Delmarva Peninsula. The town’s oldest neighborhoods have Federal, Georgian, and Victorian architecture.

Oxford traces its start from 1666 when 30 acres were laid out as a town called Oxford by William Stephens, Jr. enjoying prominence as an international shipping center surrounded by wealthy tobacco plantations. Early inhabitants included Robert Morris, Sr., who greatly influenced the town's growth; his son, Robert Morris, Jr., known as the financier of the Revolution; Jeremiah Banning, sea captain, war hero, and statesman; The Reverend Thomas Bacon, Anglican clergyman who wrote the first compilation of the laws of Maryland. Oxford has the oldest privately operated ferry service still in continuous use in the United States originally established in 1683.

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