Before the C&O Canal was built, there were many attempts to improve transportation along the Potomac River. The Potomac was the only river on the east coast to bisect the Appalachian mountain barrier, and therefore was considered the best route for Western trade. As early as 1749, the Ohio Company of Virginia (a land and trading venture organized by prominent Englishmen and Virginians) established trails and wagon roads along the Upper Potomac River Valley, linking it to the Monongahela River (a tributary of the Ohio River).
Another project before the establishment of the C&O Canal was the Potomac Company canal project. In 1772, George Washington founded the Potomac Company and proposed the construction of skirting canals on both the Virginia and Maryland side of the Potomac to bypass the river's five worst obstacles to transportation--the most serious one being Great Falls. A boat would be poled down the river and would detour around the rapids and falls by using the skirting canals and locks. The State of Maryland, however, had jurisdiction over the Potomac River and did not support the proposal. In 1784, after becoming a national hero, Washington tried again and finally received the support of both Virginia and Maryland, and, as the first president of the Potomac Company, he oversaw the building of skirting canals, locks, and channels on the Potomac River.
George Washington, who died in 1799, never saw his dream completed. The project was completed in 1802, making 220 miles of the Potomac between the Savage River and Washington, DC navigable for trade. The Potomac Company had its peak year in 1811, collecting more than $22,000 in tolls and shipping 16,350 tons of goods on 1,300 boats with a value of more than $925,000. But unpredictable currents, droughts and flooding still made transportation on the river a risky business. By the 1820s a proposal was made to build a permanent artificial canal along the river from the nation's capital all the way to the Ohio River. The rights of the old Potomac Company were transferred to a new company--the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company--and the new canal was begun.
The groundbreaking for the "Great National Project," as it was called, took place on July 4, 1828--the same day as the groundbreaking for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. President John Quincy Adams turned the first spade full of earth for the canal at Little Falls, Maryland. From the very beginning, scarcity of building supplies, labor shortages and unrest, difficulties with excavation, and the high cost of land acquisition slowed down the project. At Point of Rocks, in Frederick County, Maryland, the C&O Canal Company competed with the B&O Railroad for property rights. The ensuing lawsuit delayed the project for four years. The last 50 miles of the canal was delayed another eleven years by serious financial problems and construction of the Paw Paw Tunnel. By the time the canal was opened in Cumberland, the B&O Railroad was already well established and operating in the Ohio Valley, and the C&O Canal Company dropped its plans to continue another 180 miles westward to Pittsburgh.
The C&O Canal operated between Cumberland, Maryland and Washington, DC for 74 years with peak use in the 1870s of about 750 canal boats hauling 663,500 tons of freight--mostly coal, flour, iron, and limestone. In 1899, however, a flood destroyed the canal, forcing the C&O Canal Company to go into bankruptcy. The B&O Railroad took over receivership of the canal and operated it until 1924 when another flood destroyed it and it was abandoned. In 1938, the U.S. Government purchased the property and hoped to restore it as a natural recreational area, but in the 1950s the federal government proposed building a highway on the property. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, an avid outdoorsman, opposed the highway construction and organized a committee to preserve the canal. These efforts led to the creation of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park.
Learn more about the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal:
- Watch an early motion picture of a trip down the C&O Canal in a 1917 film entitled Down the Old Potomac from the collection Inventing Entertainment: The Edison Companies. Search this collection on the term canal for more on the Panama Canal, the Erie Canal, and the canal which circled the Pan-American Exposition.
