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Our Lady of the Elms Elementary
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The Ohio-Erie Canal
| Photographs found at the Ohio Memory Project, the Summit Memory Home page and the Ohio Historical Society were collected for the series of explanatory images below. All of these pictures were taken in later years because photography hadn't been invented when the canal opened in 1832. | |
| Video "When Canals Ran through It" |
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| Building the hundreds of miles of canals in the 1820's in Ohio was an amazing achievement of hard work and engineering. Canals were dug out by hundreds of poor, hardworking Irish and German immigrant workers like the workers digging here. After 7 years of digging the canal was complete in 1832. |
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| A young boy leads a horse already hitched and ready on the towpath near one of the Akron locks. Mules were needed to make the canal boats move through the water. Often the boat carried an extra mule for emergencies. At a steady stride, a horse or mule was able to pull almost fifty times as much weight as it could with a cart on a dirt road. |
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| But some of the 22 locks on the Ohio Erie canal were very far apart. Lonesome Lock in Northern Summit County was such a remote lock. |
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| Canal Boat Yard in Peninsula, Ohio. Boats needed to be built and repaired and businesses such as this sprang up all along the canal. |
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| Peninsula was often a difficult place to pass through since fights often broke out at this bridge lock there. The Peninsula lock was joined by an Aqueduct the carried canal boats over the river which was by now too far below the canal water level to help the boats heading for Akron to go uphill . |
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This photo shows a woman leading two horses along the towpath through
Akron.
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| Canal boats waited in line to go through a lock. the shut gates of the locks in the foreground will swing open for the next boat. Sometimes the captains would fight over who would pass through the lock first. |
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| Some canal boats were homes to the families that operated them. A family with seven children could make a life on the canal. |
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| Other boats called Packets carried passengers on a slow, bumpy ride between Chillicothe and Lake Erie. President James A. Garfield complained that his canal boat ride was a quite disagreeable experience. the trains that replaced the canal boats were faster and far more comfortable for passengers. |
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| There were many stopping
places along the canal between locks. Akron and Roscoe were favorites. This boat is passing a mill where
flour is ground from grain. Alexander Mill in Valley View, OH still stands
today along the Ohio-Erie Canal.
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| A canal boat has been pulled onto the shore out of the way near Chillicothe, OH. Canals were 40 feet wide and 4 feet deep. They were not permitted to go faster than 4 miles per hour to protect the banks from eroding. |
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| Stores like Rupp's pictured here were a favorite stopping place for canallers who needed food and supplies along the way. A store much like Rupp's called Mustill's Store stands preserved today off North Street in Akron along the canal towpath. |
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| About a dozen men relax on the bridge across Rushtown Lock. Locks were natural gathering places for people looking for excitement. Often a small business started near a lock because people on the boats were bored waiting for their boat's turn and were eager to spend money. |
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| This picture of heavy machinery over a the Miami-Erie Canal illustrates why canal transportation was good business. A canal boat could carry many tons of goods very reliably and cheaply. A canal boat could carry 85 tons, about what a semi truck carries today. And the load could be pulled by just two horses or mules. |
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| This grist mill at Zoar was build right across the canal. Even the mules on the towpath passed underneath it. |
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| Liquor establishments sprang up all along the canal and drunken canallers created havoc in some nearby communities. These women are pictured begging a saloon owner to stop selling liquor. |
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| Canal boats putting in at the busy town of Coshocton could fill up or unload many kinds of cargo. A large lumber yard is in the foreground. |
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| Two canal boats sit idle in Coshocton |
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| These bored canallers look like they're shooting frogs in the canal while they wait their turn at a lock. |
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| When a boat needed work, it was pulled ashore at a boat dock like this one at Zoar, OH. |
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Captain Pearl R. Nye was one of the last canal boat captains when the canals were destroyed by floods in 1913. He made it his life's work to record and preserve the songs sung by canallers. Visit the Library of Congress to listen to Capt. Nye singing these songs. |
