The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1935-08-09
C. &c Q. Ca.l4l ork
To Start Soon
Project Will Give Employ
ment To Large Number
OF Men


the Chesapeake and Delaware canal
10 permit the passage OF ocean-going
vessels from Chesapeake Bay to the
Delaware river, is expected to start
between August Is and 20.
An appropriation of $5,00O,0O0 is
available for this year, and 1t is ex-
nectad that 900 men will be EN-
ployed on the improvement. or this
number about 400 will be from
Maryland, ninety per cent. of them
from the relief rolls
The work in Maryland will con-
sist largely of dredging from Bethel
20 Court House Point.
Edward H. Ellis, Inc, of West
Vile. N. j., submitted low bids last
week on five of the eight items in the
dry excavations necessary to the
widening and deepening of the
Chesapeake and Delaware Canal to
a full-sized ship canal.
The aggregate of the concern s
bids on the first five items Is
$597.912.
Two concerns were equally low az
$S5,7S4 for Item 6. They were the
Burket Construction Company, OF
Vineland, N j., and Richards-Kelly
Company, Philadelphia.
Burket was low with $S3,4S5 on
Item 7 and Richards-Kelly was low
with S79,526 on Item s.
The engineers office said the items
represented the geographical units
into which the canal has been
divided.
The low bids for the wet excava-
ton or dredging on three sections OF
the canal extending from Courthouse
Point to Bethel, Md, distance
equal to about one-third the entire
canal route, amounted to $3.50, 22S
1t was announced following opening
of bids at the Office of the U. s. En-
gineer in Philadelphia.
The specifications provide for
widening the canal to ESQ feet and
deepening it to 81 feet, thereby con-
yerting the water way into ship
canal capable of carrying ocean-go-
ing vessels.
Army engineers said the excava-
ton operations will begin early next
month, and that the workers will be
taken from the relief rolls in this
area. No date has been set for sub
hitting bids on the remainder OF the
work
1t is expected the first third of the
work will be we'll under way before
these bids are submitted because an
other appropriation will be neces-
sary. Only about half of the total
estimated cost of S12,50O,OOO has
been appropriated.
The total cost of widening and
deepening the canal will be four
times as much as it cost to build
the canal back in 1925, when 1000
farmers and hired men dug the
original 14-mile waterway as part of
a Boston-to- the-South system. The
Federal government bought it in
1919 for $2,52O,O0O, which was
$4,000 more than it cost 80 build.
Enlargement of the canal will give
greater strategic value to lighter
naval craft on the Atlantic Coast and
is expected to return to the canal an
era !of prosperity which was lost
with the rise of the railroads.
Credited with vital role in the
Civil War, when supplies were rush
ed through it to Union armies, the
canal had a quiet, if picturesque,
life up until it was taken over by the
government. The locks and tow
path were then abandoned and the
waterway was made generally more
useful. But not as useful as it will
be now when ocean-going freighters
will ply through it daily, multiply
ing the present. 100000 tons of
freight annually carried between its
shores.