Question: Which was opened first, Louisville and Portland Canal or Schuylkill Canal?

Observatory Inlet is an inlet on the North Coast of British Columbia.  It is a northward extension of Portland Inlet, other sidewaters of which include the Portland Canal.  The entrance of Observatory Inlet, from Portland Inlet, lies between Ramsden Point and Nass Point.  Ramsden Point also marks, to the west, the entrance of Portland Canal.  Observatory Inlet was named by George Vancouver in 1793, because he set up his observatory on the shore of the inlet, at Salmon Cove, in order to calibrate his chronometers.  His two vessels, HMS "Discovery" and HMS "Chatham", stayed in Salmon Cove from July 23 to August 17, 1793.  During this time a boat surveying expedition under Vancouver himself explored Behm Canal.  Vancouver also named three headlands at the entrance of Observatory Inlet: Maskelyne Point, for Nevil Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal, Wales Point, for William Wales, the mathematical master who sailed with James Cook, and Ramsden Point, after the famed mathematical instrument-maker Jesse Ramsden. <SEP> Portland Inlet is an inlet of the Pacific Ocean on the coast of British Columbia, Canada, approximately 55 kilometers north of Prince Rupert, British Columbia.  It joins the Chatham Sound opposite the Dixon Entrance.  It is 40 kilometers long and as much as 13 kilometers wide.  It drains the Portland Canal, Nass River, and Khutzeymateen Inlet, among others, and is the site of Pearse Island and Somerville Island.  Other than Nass Bay and the Portland Canal, other major sidewaters of the inlet are Observatory Inlet and its east arm, Alice Arm. <SEP>  The "canal" was actually a system of interconnected canals and slack-water pools in the river, which is called a navigation.  Chartered in 1815, the Schuylkill Navigation opened in 1825 to provide transportation and water power.  At the time, the river was the least expensive and most efficient method of transporting bulk cargo, and the eastern seaboard cities of the U.S. were experiencing an energy crisis due to over forestation. Schuylkill Canal is the common, but technically inaccurate, name for the Schuylkill Navigation, a 19th-century commercial waterway in and along the Schuylkill River in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.  It fostered the mining of anthracite coal as the major source of industry between Pottsville and eastern markets.  Along the tow-paths, mules pulled barges of coal from Port Carbon through the water gaps to Pottsville; locally to the port and markets of Philadelphia; and some then by ship or through additional New Jersey waterways, to New York City markets. <SEP> The Louisville and Portland Canal was a 2 mi canal bypassing the Falls of the Ohio River at Louisville, Kentucky.  The canal opened in 1830 as the private Louisville and Portland Canal Company but was gradually bought out during the 19th century by the federal government, which had invested heavily in its construction, maintenance, and improvement.  The Falls form the only barrier to navigation between the origin of the Ohio at Pittsburgh and the port of New Orleans on the Gulf of Mexico; circumventing them was long a goal for Pennsylvanian and Cincinnatian merchants.  The Louisville and Portland Canal became the McAlpine Locks and Dam in 1962 after extensive modernization.