Great Falls Park and George Washington's Patowmack Canal

I was in Great Falls Park this morning, on the Virginia side of the Potomac River. I went out to help get a little field project started. I had meant to head for the office as soon as things were under way, but inbound traffic was so miserable that I decided to wait until after rush hour to make the trip. In the meantime, I took a walk down the canal built around the falls between 1785 and 1802 by George Washington's Patowmack Company.

The Patowmack Company was a great American enterprise, intended both to makes its owners rich and serve a national purpose -- binding the settlers across the Appalachians more tightly to their country, thus unifying the nation before it had a chance to fall apart.

The skirting canal at Great Falls was the most challenging of the five canals built by the company, and it took seventeen years to finish. Above, one of the surviving locks.

Stonework in the lock. The Patowmack Company's project rendered the river navigable part of the year as far as Cumberland, but much of the time the water in the river was either too low or too high for boats. This led to the formation of a new enterprise, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company, with its grand plan for a canal over the mountains to Pittsburgh.

View of the cut through the cliffs to the point below the falls where the canal began. The canal operated off and on until 1828, when the C&O Canal was built past this point along the northern side of the river. Alas for canal lovers, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad won the race to the west, and the C&O never fulfilled its designers' dreams.

The gorge below the falls.