page_title: Warren County Canal
section_title: A private company begins
hierarchical_section_title: Warren County Canal / History / A private company begins
context_page_description: The Warren County Canal was a branch of the Miami and Erie Canal in southwestern Ohio about 20 miles in length that connected the Warren County seat of Lebanon to the main canal at Middletown in the mid-19th century. Lebanon was at the crossroads of two major roads, the highway from Cincinnati to Columbus and the road from Chillicothe to the College Township, but Lebanon businessmen and civic leaders wanted better transportation facilities and successfully lobbied for their own canal, part of the canal fever of the first third of the 19th century. The Warren County Canal was never successful, operating less than a decade before the state abandoned it.
context_section_description: The Miami and Erie Canal was authorized by the Ohio General Assembly in 1825. Work began that same year and the canal was navigable from the Ohio River at Cincinnati to Middletown in December 1827. By April 1830, it was open to Dayton. (The entire length to Lake Erie at Toledo opened in 1845.) New York Governor DeWitt Clinton, who was the driving force behind his state's Erie Canal, came to Ohio in 1829 for the groundbreaking ceremonies of the Miami and Erie Canal, which were held in Middletown. On his trip to the Buckeye State, he visited Lebanon, staying at the Golden Lamb Inn. The village's inhabitants caught the "canal fever" of the day and demanded they too have access to the new waterway. The State quickly obliged.
  On February 22, 1830, the Ohio General Assembly incorporated a private corporation to construct and operate the branch to Lebanon, the Warren County Canal Company. The company projected the work would cost $123,861, but work progressed slowly on the canal and the company eventually acknowledged it could not complete it. By the act of February 20, 1836, the General Assembly ordered the Canal Commissioners to take possession of the unfinished canal and to complete it. The State paid the Canal Company 50% of its expenditures to that point; the company had spent $21,742.33. The Canal Commissioners estimated it would take $128,000 to finish the project, a sum which proved inadequate. The State spent a total of $217,552 for both acquiring and completing the branch.
caption: Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York, who gave Warren County "canal fever" when he visited in 1829.
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