reconstructed grist mill, using waterpower for
grinding wheat and corn, at McCormick Farm (Steeles Tavern)
Canals were built in Virginia for two main reasons: waterpower and transportation.
The smallest of the canals designed to provide power were simple ditches and flumes connecting millponds/creeks to grist mills. West of Tidewater, there was enough topographic relief for falling water to power mills on nearly every perennial stream. Milldams in the creeks replaced the beaver dams, diverting water into millraces. Waterwheels at hundreds of grist mills were powered by a small, artificially-channeled flow of falling water that then rejoined the natural stream channel downstream of the mill. The millponds captured sediment from farm operations upstream, and blocked passage of both fish and boats, so the initial stream alterations interfered with transportation.
In the mid-1800's, large investments in canals far larger than millraces were made on many rivers in Virginia. In some cases, the canal building was for waterpower, but most of the money was focused on creating canals for transportation.
The main geographic rivalry was between advocates of improving transportation up the Potomac River through the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal vs. supporters of improving transportation up the James River via the James River and Kanawha Canal. The goal was to steer western trade through the ports of Alexandria and Richmond.
While business from Piedmont and Shenandoah farmers was desireable, the big prize was the business from the Ohio River Valley. As Americans moved west across the Allegheny Mountains, they ended up in the Mississippi River watershed. Roads were poor, and wagons pulled by horses and mules could carry only a limited amount of material, but boats could float grain, lumber, whiskey, hides, and other western products downriver to New Orleans. Eastern seaports wanted to divert that traffic across the mountains to the Atlantic Coast.
The C&O Canal, as planned, would have offered a water route from Pittsburgh to Alexandria. The James River and Kanawha Canal would have intercepted the Ohio River further downstream, at Point Pleasant, and sent traffic to Richmond. Both transportation initiatives were planned initially as a series of skirting canals that would bypass the main falls/rapids (such as Great Falls) while requiring boats to rely upon water in the main river channel for most of the distance - and both grew in ambition to be totally separate channels, parallel to the rivers, with expensive locks to manage the changes in elevation.
Richmond and Alexandria were not the only cities in Virginia with dreams of using canals to increase the economic "hinterland," the backcountry farming region that traded through a Chesapeake Bay port. In Fredericksburg, the Rappahannock Navigation Company tried to build a canal network 50 miles upstream of the Fall Line to the Blue Ridge, so farmers in the Rappahannock River watershed would do business with Fredericksburg merchants.
Construction started in 1829, and proceded slowly. The Rappahannock Navigation Company lacked the resources to build a separate channel next to the river. Instead, it sought to build a series of locks and dams so batteaux (river boats) could float down the Rappahannock River, but bypass the shallow sections via locks adjacent to the river. After a rebuilding initiative in 1847-49, the infrastructure consisted of 80 locks (26 built of stone), 20 dams, and 15 miles of canal. As described in the nomination to the National Register of Historic Places:1
Bt 1855, the Rappahannock Navigation Company was bankupt. The Fredericksburg Water Power Company converted a portion of the navigation canal into a waterpower supply for mills in the city. The power company built a wooden crib dam across the river to divert a steady supply of water to the mills, then replaced that dam in 1910 with the taller concrete Embrey Dam. The waterpower canal still transported water from the river after 1910, but now it delivered it to the Embrey Power Plant. The hydropwer plant generated electricity for approximately 50 years, before being shuttered in the 1960's.2
In Richmond, the transportation and power canals developed as parallel projects. George Washington, a strong advocate of transportation improvements that would link the Ohio River valley with port cities on the Atlantic coast, supported the James River Company's efforts to build a transportation canal that would bypass rapids and low water spots that affected shipping down the James River. Business leaders in Richmond built a second power canal closer to the river; the Haxall Canal provided waterpower to mills rather than transportation services.
Richmond and Baltimore competed for the flour trade with South America, the Caribbean and Europe. Falling water from the James River turned many grindstones, and the Gallegos, Haxall, and other flour mills made Richmond into a major manufacturing center prior to the Civil War.
Transportation canals were "internal improvements" that spurred intense regional rivalries in Virginia. Government approval of charters for canal corporations, and investment of public funds in specific canal projects, forced governors and members of the General Assembly to find a balance between support for canals in the James River vs. Potomac River watersheds.
THe basic challenge was that river improvements would benefit just a narrow group of people who lived near a proposed canal project, or in the city to which the canal would steer trade. If government support for a transportation project made it easier to ship goods to Richmond, then Alexandria (and Petersburg, Fredericksburg, and Norfolk...) were jealous. Public funds spent to improve transportation in the Potomac River watershed did nothing to reduce transportation costs in the middle of the state; why should Nelson County taxpayers support a canal that would benefit farmers in Loudoun County or merchants in Alexandria?
The politicians solved the problem by supporting investment in "internal improvements" across the entire state.
The Dismal Swamp Canal benefited Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Suffolk - though it did little for any other part of Virginia. The upstream residents of the James River valley, and especially the citizens of Richmond, were the primary beneficiaries of the James River and Kanawha Canal project. Residents in Culpeper, Orange, and other upstream counties - and of course Fredericksburg - planned to gain from the Rappahannock River Canal. Enhancements to the Appomattox River would benefit Petersburg and the upstream residents in that watershed. The upstream residents in the Potomac River valley, plus the residents in Alexandria, would benefit from the Potowmack Canal and its successor, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.
The Potowmac Canal and the later Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal in the Potomac watershed helped farmers in the lower Shenandoah Valley and the merchants of Alexandria - but took potential business away from Richmond. The James River Company and the later James River and Kanawha Canal in the James River watershed provided no economic benefits directly to Virginians along the Potomac River.
The General Assembly bought stock in various transportation projects, providing up to 60% of the financing at times. George Washington was an advocate for the Potomac River connection with the Ohio River, but he too felt obliged to express support for improving the James. The elected officials in Virginia balanced the state's investments in the two canals in the Potomac River and the James River watersheds. This created a sufficient coalition in the General Assembly to overcome resistance from others regions that would gain nothing, such as Tidewater plantations that already had easy access to transatlantic shipping.
George Washington in particular dreamed of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and other transportation projects uniting different sections of the new, still-fragile United States. Washington and others viewed canals as essential transportation improvements not only for reducing shipping costs for farmers east of the Alleghenies, but also for facilitating trading alliances across the Appalachian Mountains. Washington wanted to ensure western settlers were economically connected to the Atlantic port cities.
Trade between the Ohio River and Atlantic watersheds would facilitate political alliances and peaceful resolution of conflicts. This is still a viable argument, though the locations have changed - listen to the debates for permitting sale of American wheat and corn (and even software and high-tech items) to "rogue countries," for supporting the World Trade Organization, for expanding the North American Free Trade Alliance (NAFTA), and for ending sanctions against so-called terrorist states...
225 years ago, George Washington feared that settlers in the Mississippi drainage would have minimal economic ties to the east coast. France and Spain claimed dominion in the Ohio River watershed by right of prior discovery - to the French, Louisiana extended far up the Mississippi and La Virgine was east of the Alleghenies. Their foreign military post at New Orleans controlled Ohio River trade, since water transport was the most economical way to carry surplus products from farm to market. The British colonies along the Atlantic seaboard (and later the new country called the United States of America) might be limited to those lands east of the mountains.
The risk was real. In the early 1800's, the head of the United States Army schemed to steer the allegiance of western settlers to Spain and away from the United States - and former Vice President Aaron Burr was tried in Richmond for treason related to his similar efforts.
Virginia was the dominant member of the new United States from 1775-1800, with more people and a stronger economy than Pennsylvania or New York. However, in Pennsylvania the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Canal bypassed the Great Falls on the lower Susquehanna River in 1797, and in 1803 the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal was started to connect Philadelphia with the northern end of the Chesapeake Bay. In New York, the Erie Canal connected the Hudson River valley with the Great Lakes in 1825, and by 1840 New York was the preeminent state in population and economic power. Virginia politicians mourned the decline of the state's importance and the state's residents continued to emigrate to new lands on the frontier, while Virginia floundered in its efforts to establish cheap transportation connections with the Ohio River.
When the recession hit in 1857, followed by the Civil War, it became clear that Virginia had over-invested in too many money-loosing canal projects. Many partially-funded canals were never completed before a new technology - the railroad - provided a better/faster/cheaper alternative form of transportation. Virginia politicians failed to restrict state-sponsored infrastructure investment to just cost-effective projects. After the Civil War, the burden of the state debt would shape Virginia politics into the 1960's.
In the "what if?" category, imagine how Virginia might have evolved if the Potomac River or James River canal initiatives had been successful in reaching the Ohio River. Virginia might have retained its economic leadership - and the Civil War might have been averted. Though the Northwest Ordinance barred slavery from the territory, southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were relatively supportive of the Confederacy because they were economically integrated with the slave economy of the southern states. Had trade from that "Old Northwest" region been aligned more with Virginia than with New York and Pennsylvania, there may have been no President Lincoln, no Civil War - and perhaps no 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments either...
 Aqueduct Bridge, where Alexandria Canal crossed the Potomac River - note Three Sisters islands (arrow shows flow downtream) (Mason Island is now "Teddy Roosevelt Island," where I-66 crosses into DC) Source: Library of Virginia, Board of Public Works Inventory- Alexandria Canal Company |
 Alexandria Canal, stretching from Aqueduct Bridge at Rosslyn to Alexandria (Analostan Island is now "Teddy Roosevelt Island," where I-66 crosses into DC) Source: Library of Congress, G.M. Hopkins 1879 map - Atlas of fifteen miles around Washington, including the counties of Fairfax and Alexandria, Virginia |
1. "Rapidan Dam Canal of the Rappahannock Navigation" nomination form for the National Register of Historic Places, Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 1973, http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Counties/Spotsylvania/088-0137_Rapidan_Dam_Canal_of_the_Rappahannock_Navigation_1973_Final_Nomination.pdf (last checked October 9, 2011)
2. "The Rappahannock Canal was one of the region's most impressive transportation projects--and a monumental failure," Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star, May 25, 2003, http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2003/052003/05252003/976222/index_html?page=1< (last checked October 27, 2010)
3. Albert Gallatin, Report of the secretary of the Treasury, on the subject of public roads and canals, 1816, p. 17, http://books.google.com/ebooks?id=d-UNAQAAMAAJM (last checked October 9, 2011)
4. James Madison, "Veto of federal public works bill," March 3, 1817, http://www.constitution.org/jm/18170303_veto.htm (last checked October 9, 2011)
5. The Erie Canal: a Brief History, New York State Canal System, undated, http://www.canals.ny.gov/cculture/history/erie-canal-history.pdf
