The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1938-09-22
Sad History Of The c. & o. Canal
Is Recalled By Museum Plan
General George Washington Sought Waterway To
Link Western Frontier With SeabOard

At Hagerstown last Saturday, Judge
Frank G. Waggaman, Of the Circuit
Court, entered an order ratifying the
sale of the Chesapeake and Ohio Ca
nal to the Federal Government follow
ing a petition for its transfer from the
receivers.
An article recently appearing in
the daily press gives brief history
of the old waterway:
In the morning sun the Washington
Monument, like sun dial, lays its
shadow off to the west-where mud
dy ditch commentaries a great vision
of the nations father.
If you follow this pointer out to
old Georgetown you will find narrow
stream running through a canyon of
man-made walls--old factories, three
story tenements, modern cement mills,
the retaining wall of an old church
graveyard. Beyond the streets shared
by garages and narrow Colonial
houses that rent of $125 a month the
rivulet meets the Potomac River.
From a little bridge you can see
water rushing past broken lock gates.
An old man fishes quietly from the
bank Children play on the weeded
shore, and, looking down, you can
see on the bottom an automobile tire,
whiskey bottle, a child's rusted
scooter, somebody's lost checkbook.
Was Washington Dream
This once was "the great canal"
This was George Washington's dream
of a waterway which would conquer
the mountain barriers to the West and
connect the frontier with the seaboard,
thus binding these (Western settlers)
to us by chain which can never be
broken"
Boats soon may pass through the
locks again. The old lockmen may
come back to push the great wooden
levers of the lock gates. The bottom
may be cleared of junk and the tow
path freed of weeds. But the Chesa-
peake and Ohio Canal will not be a
highway of commerce again. 1t will be
an outdoor museum.
Fairgrounds Planned
For the twenty-five miles from the
Capital to Seneca, Md, the Govern
ment plans a historical playground,
where sight-seers in canoes and slow
motor boats may travel the route by
which million tons of coal year
once rode down from the mines be-
yond Cumberland. Nature lovers will
be free to venture into the lush I'M
dergrowth, where giant elms shade
the Powered paths.
The old canal folk who still live in
the LIGHTHOUSE or in cabins built on
canal land are not sure they like this
proposed development.
"It's gonna be mighty hard on
some of u.s." observed one old-timer,
whose cabin stands hard by the red
stone bridge that carries the canal
over Seneca creek. We've had good
fishing here and hunting-ducks, rab-
bits, squirrels, birds. l suppose the
court will stop that; make it a wild
life preserve. And these people who
put hundreds of dollars into summer
cottages on canal property, watched
it wrecked by floods and rebuilt it
again and again--I guess they're just
out of luck"
The men who worked the locks and
walked the levels in the days when 600
canal boats piled up and down would
rather live undisturbed. The crumbling
masonry and the rotting wooden lock
gates are there to remind them OF the
days when two lock tenders worked
the clock around. .aa.. .,-.,. .sls. ';..