Building the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal
The End of America’s Canal Building Golden Era
© Jim Rada
Jul 12, 2008
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was America’s “Great National Project” of the early 19th Century.
The C&O Breaks Ground
On July 4, 1828, President John Quincy Adams broke ground for the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal near the Great Falls in Maryland. The canal board members and officials had breakfast in Georgetown and then took a boat to the powder magazine at the head of Little Falls. There the officials gave their speeches about the importance of the canal in America’s future growth (National Park Service, Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, Washington DC, U.S. Department of the Interion, 1991).
The Adams was given a shovel and attempted to turn the first spadeful of dirt. In an ominous turn of events, he hit rocky ground. So hard was the ground that the president wound up taking off his suit coat to wrestle a spadeful of earth from the rocks.
Construction of the Canal
The C&O was a construction and engineering challenging for its time. The charter required that 100 operable miles be built in five years. Benjamin Wright who had overseen the construction of the Erie Canal was chosen for the job, according to the National Park Service.
The canal construction involved more than simply digging a trench across level land and making it water tight. Boats traveling from Georgetown to Cumberland, Maryland, had to lifted more than 600 feet on their westward journey.
The 184.5-mile-long canal was built in sections bid out to independent contractors. The laborers were mainly imported Irishman, who jumped at the chance to come to America, though they quickly found the work unsatifying. The work was hard and the tools were picks, shovels, horses and black powder.
When completed, the canal had 11 aqueducts, 74 lift locks, 160 culverts, and 12 river feeder locks and guard locks.
C&O Canal Construction Problems
Shortages of suitable building materials and money quickly set in slowing the progress. Then there was the escalating cost to purchase land and the on-going legal battles with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad that was trying to build over much of the same area.
Building the Paw Paw Tunnel
When the canal reached the Paw Paw Bends, an area were the Potomac River bends back and forth upon itself, engineers had a decision to make. Following the river would involve six miles of construction or they could tunnel through the mountain for 3,100 feet, according to the National Park Service.
They opted for the tunnel thinking it would take less time.
It didn’t.
The tunnel took nearly 12 years and 6 million bricks to build.
Completing the C&O Canal
When the canal reached Cumberland, Maryland, in 1850, the B&O Railroad had already been there 8 years, though both projects had started on the same day.
The final project had cost $14 million or $9.5 million more than estimated. According to Elizabeth Kytle in Home on the Canal (Cabin John, Md.: Seven Locks Press, 1983), as a portion of the gross national project, building the C&O Canal was the equivalent to putting a man on the moon.
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