Maryland

Canal History

Maryland is home to one of America’s best known canals, the 184.5-mile-long Chesapeake and Ohio Canal that runs between Washington DC and Cumberland, Maryland.

In it’s original plan, the C&O was to be a competitor to the Erie Canal offering a through route between Washington and Pittsburgh. The use of ‘Ohio’ is not the state of Ohio however the Ohio River. Thus the canal would have connected the Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio River. However the western end was never started and the western terminus was always at Cumberland. The canal was saved from destruction and the entire route is now the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park.

Maryland is also home of the Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal that ran between Havre de Grace, Maryland and Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. It formed a connection between the canals of Pennsylvania and the Chesapeake Bay and Baltimore. The canal use 29 locks to overcome the 233 feet of elevation change along the route.

Canal Groups and Organizations

C&O Canal Association is an independent, all-volunteer citizens organization established in 1954 to help conserve the natural and historical environment of the C&O Canal and the Potomac River Basin. The association works with the National Park Service in its efforts to preserve and promote the 184-mile towpath.

Friends of the Historic Great Falls Tavern focuses on the Great Falls Park.

Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Park oversees the entire length of the canal and the friends groups listed above aid the staff of the Park in their mission.

The Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal Lock House Museum is located in Havre de Grace. The museum tells the story of the history of the canal.

Major REPOSITORIES and Archives

This is a listing of the larger archive holdings. Many of the small volunteer-run historical societies along the routes of the canals will likely have hidden collections and thus, they should not be over-looked.

As the C & O is a federally run canal park, the Library of Congress would be a place to begin your research.

The University of Maryland has the C&O Canal Company records.

The National Park Service offers a detailed history of the C&O Canal as a downloadable pdf.

CANAL INDEX PAGES

The “canal index” project is an on-going project of the ACS to document canal sites. Most of the information is from the 1970-1990 time period, however new pages are being added. Feel free to contribute to this project by submitting a form.

Note: Canals in blue and underlined have index sheets which are accessible by double clicking on the hyperlink. Other canals of the state are included but do not have index or structure sheets as of the present. 

Please note that these are the actual pages done in the early 1970s.  Changes have occurred since and there are some inaccuracies in the information on the pages.

Revised 5/1/2022