I recently visited Lock 48 located along route 104 just northwest of Portsmouth in the community of Rushtown Ohio. The stones are still in place and easily accessed. Very nice stone work that was done from 1830 to 1832 according to the historical marker. I have photos of this lock posted on my flickr site of tersan photography, a google search will get you there. It is amazing to see the stone mason's work of smooth cut stone and precisely placed to form the chamber. Almost 200 years old and still there.
I grew up in Dayton where the massive 1913 flood was a major event and many earthen dams remain today for flood control. There was a brick street in Dayton called Canal St., a filled in remnant of the canal passing through town.
That was on the Miami & Erie Canal. I wasn't around in 1913, but every description I've heard said that the flooding was state-wide, pretty much destroying the entire canal network. I just looked at the cause and it looks like it was frozen ground, so no absorption, plus snow on the ground to melt, and up to 8" of rain throughout the entire region, not just Ohio. One place said 13 states were hit.
I grew up in Dover. Back when the canal ran through, it was called Canal Dover because there were several other towns in Ohio that went by Dover. Dover still has a Canal Days festival every year in the downtown.
If the canal was still intact and boaters could travel from the Cuyahoga (to lake erie) to the muskingum (to Ohio river), that would be a very busy recreational waterway. I'm sure people would also do miniature great loops
Oh, definitely, and a lot of canals are reopening. In England, the canal network is pretty active with recreational and houseboats. In New York, the Erie Canal (although not the original route) is open. The Trent-Severn Canal in Ontario is hugely popular with recreational boaters. Where they reopen canals, restaurants, B&B's, coffee shops, and lots of other businesses sprout up along the canal for the boaters.
Summit lake was the lake you are talking about the canal flowed out both ends that had (still has) the floating towpath and. Summit county is named because of this lake being the high point of the Ohio Erie canal. Medina county to the west and Portage county to the east met in the middle of what is now Summit county.
Thanks! I just found it on Google Maps. The floating towpath is only at the south end? Do you know why it's there? Just looking at the map, it doesn't look like it'd have been hard to follow the shore all the way (although it may have been wetlands back then). I'd guess someone owned the property there and had a lot of political power and didn't want to sell?
There's must have been a protocol for the dance between opposing mule teams to pass each other as well as the barges dropping their tow lines before the surface - very interesting thanks!
@@bradleyd.thornton5963 Yep. Fortunately, the towpaths are wide enough that they can just stand aside. Unfortunately, although there are a few places with mule-drawn canal boats, as far as I know, all of them operate only a single boat, so we don't get to see them meeting
When I lived in the Akron area I found out that the flow from Summit Lake is controlled by an international treaty since flow North goes to the Great Lakes and flow to the South goes to the Ohio River and the Mississippi basin.
One of the narrowboats? Some of the chains of locks, aqueducts (including a HUGE one) and tunnels there are really impressive. We had some aqueducts here in the states, but only a tiny handful of canal tunnels, I'm afraid.
Looking through the Industrial Revolution lens, you see that Western Europe is just a big peninsula with a number of slow moving deep rivers penetrating into the interior. England also has easily navigated rivers. Seeing this, I realized the Eastern US is/was a peninsula of a sort with the Mississippi River. With the Erie Canal and later the St. Lawerence Seaway, it is a de facto island in regards to water transport. This is born out by looking at population density which drops off rapidly west of the Mississippi (or away from the Missouri river). Until trains and later the TVA project, East Tennessee was economically strapped due to lack of non-over the road transport. In contrast, Africa has a narrow coastal lowland with a high plateau interior. The rivers from the interior are fast, with waterfalls and cascades so development had to await the railroads, but even then the steep climbs impacted the economic viability of enterprises away from the coast.
Even today, when you look at night time photos of Earth from space, you see the big bodies of water outlined, and strips of light following the navigable waterways. In the US, many interstate highways still follow, sometimes exactly, Native American trade routes. I hadn't viewed it from the peninsula viewpoint before, but we're still tied to the old water routes.
It's such a shame that Ohio has abandoned its canals system. Unlike Europe, England in particular, has taken to restoring thecountries massive canal systems, while Ohio's silt in and disappear.
That huge flood just wiped out all of them at once. If it'd only been a little a time, it might have been different, but the repair costs were just so huge, they didn't want to do it. Same for surrounding states, really.
I grew up in Lockland, Ohio, named for its canal locks. Maybe I'm missing something about buoyant vs. land-laden or towed freight, but it just seems like an incredibly thin advantage building canals over improving the required tow paths into actual roads. Why wouldn't they forget about the hydraulic engineering, pick the best road paths (which don't always line up with waterways), and build first-class roads?
Great question. The main issue is cost vs cargo load. A horse-drawn wagon on unimproved dirt road can carry about a ton, assuming no big hills. On well-built roads of the time, a horse could carry more, but on a canal, a single horse or mule might be able to carry 50 tons. Once dug, you'd need to fix leaks, dredge some areas (check out my canal water management video) occasionally repair locks, aqueducts, etc, but on roads, you'd be constantly patching potholes, and still fixing bridges, etc. Corduroy roads improved things over dirt, but no one wanted to do stone roads outside the cities.
Even in Italy, river navigation was very important for the economy, but I have no idea what the percentage is, in kilometres, of artificial canals. A little curiosity, the expression "Industrial Revolution", personally, and I believe throughout Europe, it is associated with the enormous pollution produced by it, in England, these are school memories from 55 years ago...😄
The pollution was a definite side-effect of burning so much coal, mostly, especially cheap, low-grade coal. It was enough of a problem that by the mid-1800's, at least in some areas, locomotives had to burn coke, instead of coal, because it was quite a bit cleaner.
I visited Canal Fulton, OH once on business, and there is a section of canal running through the town, if I remember correctly. Was it part of the Erie Canal system?
my late dad was born in akron. he was saying that when the feds made a park there , the feds bought his child hood home and set it back quite a bit. p s this is also known as the western extention. my mom who was an amaetur reserch geneaologist was also knowlagble on the eirie canal proper . one of our ancesters ,when he died , found his bill of lading , he was one of the first boatmen on the erie canal proper . we have proof of that . grat job.
This is the stuff that's sometimes really hard to find, or even gets lost forever. If you haven't already, get copies of some of that to historical societies.
If I’ve said it once I’ve said it 1000 times my second cousin on my sister side of the family worked with a guy who’s mailman was in the army with a dude whose neighbor had a boat😮
But was it a really, REALLY BIG boat. You know, with room for 2 of every kind of animal? Or was it more like a canal boat that would actually fit in the locks?
great topic and content. love learning more from these shorter videos. keep up the great work.
Thanks!
I recently visited Lock 48 located along route 104 just northwest of Portsmouth in the community of Rushtown Ohio. The stones are still in place and easily accessed. Very nice stone work that was done from 1830 to 1832 according to the historical marker. I have photos of this lock posted on my flickr site of tersan photography, a google search will get you there. It is amazing to see the stone mason's work of smooth cut stone and precisely placed to form the chamber. Almost 200 years old and still there.
Really good informative history, thank you
Thanks! Glad you liked it.
I grew up in Dayton where the massive 1913 flood was a major event and many earthen dams remain today for flood control. There was a brick street in Dayton called Canal St., a filled in remnant of the canal passing through town.
That was on the Miami & Erie Canal. I wasn't around in 1913, but every description I've heard said that the flooding was state-wide, pretty much destroying the entire canal network. I just looked at the cause and it looks like it was frozen ground, so no absorption, plus snow on the ground to melt, and up to 8" of rain throughout the entire region, not just Ohio. One place said 13 states were hit.
I grew up in Dover. Back when the canal ran through, it was called Canal Dover because there were several other towns in Ohio that went by Dover. Dover still has a Canal Days festival every year in the downtown.
You've got a weird dam there in Dover. That's the one people sometimes kayak through, isn't it?
When is the festival?
If the canal was still intact and boaters could travel from the Cuyahoga (to lake erie) to the muskingum (to Ohio river), that would be a very busy recreational waterway. I'm sure people would also do miniature great loops
Oh, definitely, and a lot of canals are reopening. In England, the canal network is pretty active with recreational and houseboats. In New York, the Erie Canal (although not the original route) is open. The Trent-Severn Canal in Ontario is hugely popular with recreational boaters. Where they reopen canals, restaurants, B&B's, coffee shops, and lots of other businesses sprout up along the canal for the boaters.
Summit lake was the lake you are talking about the canal flowed out both ends that had (still has) the floating towpath and. Summit county is named because of this lake being the high point of the Ohio Erie canal. Medina county to the west and Portage county to the east met in the middle of what is now Summit county.
Thanks! I just found it on Google Maps. The floating towpath is only at the south end? Do you know why it's there? Just looking at the map, it doesn't look like it'd have been hard to follow the shore all the way (although it may have been wetlands back then). I'd guess someone owned the property there and had a lot of political power and didn't want to sell?
There's must have been a protocol for the dance between opposing mule teams to pass each other as well as the barges dropping their tow lines before the surface - very interesting thanks!
@@bradleyd.thornton5963 Yep. Fortunately, the towpaths are wide enough that they can just stand aside. Unfortunately, although there are a few places with mule-drawn canal boats, as far as I know, all of them operate only a single boat, so we don't get to see them meeting
@@bradleyd.thornton5963 the canal crews were a rowdy bunch and fistfights were very common, often over the right away and access to the locks.
When I lived in the Akron area I found out that the flow from Summit Lake is controlled by an international treaty since flow North goes to the
Great Lakes and flow to the South goes to the Ohio River and the Mississippi basin.
Interesting video, great to learn about USA canals.
PS - Took a family vacation in England and spent a week on a canal boat. Great times!
One of the narrowboats? Some of the chains of locks, aqueducts (including a HUGE one) and tunnels there are really impressive. We had some aqueducts here in the states, but only a tiny handful of canal tunnels, I'm afraid.
Looking through the Industrial Revolution lens, you see that Western Europe is just a big peninsula with a number of slow moving deep rivers penetrating into the interior. England also has easily navigated rivers. Seeing this, I realized the Eastern US is/was a peninsula of a sort with the Mississippi River. With the Erie Canal and later the St. Lawerence Seaway, it is a de facto island in regards to water transport. This is born out by looking at population density which drops off rapidly west of the Mississippi (or away from the Missouri river). Until trains and later the TVA project, East Tennessee was economically strapped due to lack of non-over the road transport.
In contrast, Africa has a narrow coastal lowland with a high plateau interior. The rivers from the interior are fast, with waterfalls and cascades so development had to await the railroads, but even then the steep climbs impacted the economic viability of enterprises away from the coast.
Even today, when you look at night time photos of Earth from space, you see the big bodies of water outlined, and strips of light following the navigable waterways. In the US, many interstate highways still follow, sometimes exactly, Native American trade routes.
I hadn't viewed it from the peninsula viewpoint before, but we're still tied to the old water routes.
It's such a shame that Ohio has abandoned its canals system. Unlike Europe, England in particular, has taken to restoring thecountries massive canal systems, while Ohio's silt in and disappear.
That huge flood just wiped out all of them at once. If it'd only been a little a time, it might have been different, but the repair costs were just so huge, they didn't want to do it. Same for surrounding states, really.
I grew up in Lockland, Ohio, named for its canal locks. Maybe I'm missing something about buoyant vs. land-laden or towed freight, but it just seems like an incredibly thin advantage building canals over improving the required tow paths into actual roads. Why wouldn't they forget about the hydraulic engineering, pick the best road paths (which don't always line up with waterways), and build first-class roads?
Great question. The main issue is cost vs cargo load. A horse-drawn wagon on unimproved dirt road can carry about a ton, assuming no big hills. On well-built roads of the time, a horse could carry more, but on a canal, a single horse or mule might be able to carry 50 tons.
Once dug, you'd need to fix leaks, dredge some areas (check out my canal water management video) occasionally repair locks, aqueducts, etc, but on roads, you'd be constantly patching potholes, and still fixing bridges, etc. Corduroy roads improved things over dirt, but no one wanted to do stone roads outside the cities.
Even in Italy, river navigation was very important for the economy, but I have no idea what the percentage is, in kilometres, of artificial canals. A little curiosity, the expression "Industrial Revolution", personally, and I believe throughout Europe, it is associated with the enormous pollution produced by it, in England, these are school memories from 55 years ago...😄
The pollution was a definite side-effect of burning so much coal, mostly, especially cheap, low-grade coal. It was enough of a problem that by the mid-1800's, at least in some areas, locomotives had to burn coke, instead of coal, because it was quite a bit cleaner.
I visited Canal Fulton, OH once on business, and there is a section of canal running through the town, if I remember correctly. Was it part of the Erie Canal system?
It's on the Ohio and Erie Canal. The Erie Canal is over in New York.
my late dad was born in akron. he was saying that when the feds made a park there , the feds bought his child hood home and set it back quite a bit. p s this is also known as the western extention. my mom who was an amaetur reserch geneaologist was also knowlagble on the eirie canal proper . one of our ancesters ,when he died , found his bill of lading , he was one of the first boatmen on the erie canal proper . we have proof of that . grat job.
This is the stuff that's sometimes really hard to find, or even gets lost forever. If you haven't already, get copies of some of that to historical societies.
If I’ve said it once I’ve said it 1000 times my second cousin on my sister side of the family worked with a guy who’s mailman was in the army with a dude whose neighbor had a boat😮
But was it a really, REALLY BIG boat. You know, with room for 2 of every kind of animal? Or was it more like a canal boat that would actually fit in the locks?
@@Industrial_Revolution i’m pretty sure it was just a canoe if I remember, right🤭😝🤘👍
OK, so a couple humans, a couple dogs, and it will fit easily into the lock. Sounds like a pretty good boat.