Note- This article is about guide books authored by canal society volunteers which have been printed and distributed in fairly low numbers, which can make them difficult to find if you are not aware of them. “Formal” guides that have been authored, printed and even sold with professional help have not been included.
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One day when I was visiting the Canal Society of NYS Samuel Center in Port Byron, Park Director Dan Wiles was showing me their stacks of society guide books that have been published over the last five decades. He mentioned that as people have passed away, or began to clean and de-clutter, many old guide books were being returned. So it might be an excellent time to reintroduce the guide book to a newer generation as these guides can contain some wonderful information not found in other sources.
If you never have attended a society study tour, you might not be aware of the guides, as they were printed with a limited run and handed out during trip registration. Extra copies were often given away to the tour stop hosts as a thank you, and if there were more, they were sold locally at society events. In this way, these guides often had a publication run of less then 200 or even 100.
As my beginnings were with the CSNYS, I had naturally thought that the guide book was a staple of the society weekend tours. And it was, as at each registration, the participant would receive their name tag, registration materials and the tour guide book It was only when I began to attend tours hosted by other groups that I realized that guide book was not always a given.
So what is a society trip guide book and how does it differ from the typical guide book?
For decades, the biannual canal society field trip, or as Thomas Grasso liked to call them, the “study tour,” was a staple of what most of the state societies did. Each spring and fall, a weekend trip would be planned to make an “on the ground” study of a selected canal section. The trip would cover a selected section of canal with any where from five to nine stops, or whatever was reasonable for an eight hour day. The stops focused on what was present, what was safe, and what could accommodate a bus or a number of cars. Sometimes, the bus would quickly drop people off at a trail and then pick them up a mile or so down the line. As the bus rolled along, the trip host or chairperson would give an quick history and overview of the next stop knowing that most folks would scatter for photos when they unloaded at the stop.
If the hosting organization used them, the guide book could be used to give background and context to the trip. It might have have maps and photos that each person could closely look at instead of having the guide hold up or pass around images. Depending on the author, might might include basic facts such as; maps, canal profile, lock lift, construction and use dates, who was the engineer, and so on. The guides were focused on the sites that would be visited during the tour, and were not always a comprehensive history of the canal. In short, the guide could serve as a recap of the weekend tour.
As with most society publications put out by volunteers, the guides can be divided into two periods which might be titled; “before desktop publishing” and “after desktop publishing.” In short, the power of home computer and publishing software has greatly revolutionized the guide book. In the “before” times, the guide book was often a bunch of single-sided typed pages, and hand-drawn maps and diagrams, some poorly copied photos. These were mostly taken from the hosts knowledge, personal collection, and perhaps what could be found at local libraries and historical societies. They were copied at the nearest photocopier and then stapled together. Over the years these were somewhat improved and expanded by using a local print shop who could offer a bit better quality and bind the books with glue or use plastic spirals.
Once computers became a part of the household, the authors had a bit more flexibility, and a lot more power, to put out a more complete and professional quality guide book. Images became clearer with higher quality paper, two-sided pages became standard, and later the use of color was introduced. With the internet and resources such as digital newspapers and so on, the author could conduct a lot of research from their home and thus enrich the amount of information included. Given all this, all guide books tend to reflect their authors and their enthusiasm and knowledge of the study area. It can take many hours of study, writing, editing, checking and rechecking, to craft a decent guidebook, and many trip hosts didn’t have the time, or desire, to do the work. All the guides are in the 8.5 x 11 inch format. As most of these societies have hosted trips for more then 50 years, many sites have been visited and revisited. It can be helpful to review all the tour guides to see how sites have changed over the years and what new research has been conducted.
It might be helpful to note that many trips were co-sponsored with neighboring societies, so if you can’t find a guide in the state you are researching, check the state next door to see if they printed a guide.
With all this in mind, I pulled out the many guide books that I have in the ACS archives. Here is a summary of what I found.
Canal Society of New York State – The first guide was printed in 1961 for the tour of the Cayuga and Seneca Canal. The early guides are mostly a road log of stops and hand drawn maps that can be very detailed. Beginning in 1980 the guides featured a geology overview by Thomas Grasso, and the amount of content about doubles with 25 to 30 pages. In 1987 the society printed the first 50 page guide, and in 1990 the guide topped the 100 page mark. The first guide to feature color was with the 2009 Erie Canal Aqueducts tour.
The society also published guides for their out of state trips to the Morris Canal in 2002, the Rideau Canal in 2003, the Portage Railroad in 2006 and the C&O in 2014. All the guidebooks have been scanned but none are available as digital downloads. The society has a fairly complete collection of paper copies available for purchase. A listing of their trips can be found here.
Canal Society of Indiana – The society has been hosting study tours since 1982, however, the first published guide was in 1998 with the tour of the Wabash and Erie. Even then, not every trip has a guide. The guides have benefited greatly by having Carolyn Schmidt as the sole editor, and the results are a very uniform style and appearance from trip to trip. These guides are simply fantastic resources and should not be overlooked as they are very comprehensive in what information they contain.
The society has also hosted or co-hosted trips into Ohio eleven times and each of these has a guide. The guides are available online as digital downloads on the website with quite a nice organization by year, county, and canal.
Canal Society of Ohio – I could only find a few copies of guidebooks from the CSO in the American Canal Society archives. So I reached out to Michael Morthorst, CSO president, to see how often the society printed guidebooks for the study tours. He reports that the CSO did print guidebooks for their trips and his own collection dates back to 1988.
In the guides that I have I see the typical variation of quality and content. For example, the 2019 Spring Tour (Circleville to Chillicothe) is quite detailed with 108 pages that include history, maps, and photos. The guide was printed in cooperation with the Chillicothe Restoration Foundation and the quality of the guide certainly reflects that partnership. The other guides in the ACS collection follow the typical format of; introduction, tour stops, maps and references. These have plastic covers, wire or plastic spiral bindings, and average 15 to 30 pages.
Michael notes that there is no central repository for the back issues, however, the CSO website states that reprints of some guides are available by request.
Pennsylvania Canal Society – The PCS and the CSNYS share founding members and thus share some guide book history. Early examples of the guides include a list of stops and some helpful “explainer” drawings/maps. All the examples I have are in the typical 8.5 x 11 inch format. I have not found a comprehensive listing of trips or guides available, although I would expect that the National Canal Museum in Easton has most copies.
Other canal groups and societies have tackled the question of a guide book in the more traditional manner by publishing a comprehensive guide of the entire canal. These guides are usually printed in greater numbers and can be sold at book stores and museums, thus they receive a bit more attention, although you are unlikely to find then on Amazon. But they can still reflect the local knowledge of the author and in that way be very useful to the researcher.
The Virginia Canals and Navigations Society has published 21 “atlases.” These are in a 8.5 x 14 inch format that allow for a very nice presentation of the maps, which are the main feature of the guide. Most of the information is presented as by using topographical maps, overlaid with text blocks and arrows pointing to numerous sites.
The information found between the map pages contains articles on history, people, boats, geology, suggested highway markers, historic articles and recollections and a lot more. These guides were written mostly by Dr. William Trout and include wisdom from his lifetime of study.
The Middlesex Canal Association has a very good canal guide authored by Burt VerPlank. The guide uses a 8.5 x 5 inch format and takes the reader along a tour of the 30 miles of canal from south to north. Large fold out maps make this guide very easy to read and understand as you seek sites hidden in the urban environment of the Middlesex.
In conclusion, these small production study tour guide books can be a rich source of information that might not be found elsewhere, and most come with a decent list of references that could also be useful in directing further research. However, finding them, or simply finding a listing of them, can be a challenge. Be sure to seek them out by contacting the state canal society, local historical societies, libraries and archives.
Also note that the authors of the guide books typically would publish more in depth articles in the society’s newsletter. Be sure to check those as well.