On April 6, 2022, Terry sent out this column. He introduced it by writing;
In going through my listing of columns, I noticed that I haven’t had one for awhile on the Sandy & Beaver, so I’ve resurrected these notes from a hike made in early June 1971, where I made a momentous discovery (to me) and also got terribly lost – fortunately the only time I did.
Max Gard did a tremendous job putting out his book on the Sandy & Beaver in 1952 before a lot of the data on the exact route of that canal became available. It is still a very accurate history. But I soon discovered when hiking the western division that Max’s guide, in several places, didn’t make sense. Then in the early 1990s, I believe someone “discovered” in the moldering files of an 1854 Lisbon newspaper, a listing of the parcels the Sandy & Beaver Canal had been auctioned off in to pay part of their debts. Now it, and Max’s guide are twin bibles to any hiker of the Sandy & Beaver canal. But I didn’t have the list of parcels then, so all I had was Max’s guide and my own sense of direction. Which failed me utterly during that hike in 1971.
That hike took place before I had seen the parcels, and when I discovered, what I later identified as Dam 9, and a stretch of canal of about a mile in slack water, I didn’t know what to make of it. There are still, even with the list of parcels and miles and miles of hiking that division, several sections that I can’t figure out, but I wrote a guide to the western division and made it available in the mid 1990s.
In the meantime, HEADWAY to you all!!!!!!!
SANDY & BEAVER HIKE
June 06, 1971i
This hike was the first time, I believe, I was into this section of the western division of the Sandy & Beaver Canal. I was still driving my 1964 ½ Ford Mustang so I probably parked it at the Crossroads Shopping Center at the north-east corner of Route 800 and Route #183. There was an access road of some kind down into the flats just a bit south of that intersection toward the east. I may have taken it, as I did on a lot of subsequent hikes.
Everything was very wet and mucky down in this area which had been only minimally disturbed by the construction of the “new” (1935) concrete Route 800 bridge across the Big Sandy Creek. The bridge was a result of the construction in the mid 1930s of several flood control dams in the area. One was built across the Big Sandy east of Bolivar and another one across the Tuscarawas north of Dover.
The hike at first wasn’t that strenuous once I got through the muck and wet to the canal towpath. There was a gas pipeline buried in the towpath and legends of “pipe-line walkers” over the years scanning the line for problems had left a clear trail for me. I got about 2 ½ miles in, at the point where the gas pipe line crossed from the right bank of the creek to the left. The canal had been quite evident all along here, and it contained a lock site (#28) that I don’t believe I noticed in this hike.
Just a little bit prior to this pipe-line crossing point was an ‘L’ shaped earth wall with heavy stone rip-rap on the creek side of the canal’s towpath that was mentioned in Max Gard’s Guide to the Sandy &Beaver Canal. It was in remarkably good condition and the action of the “L”, on the west end of the wall had ‘shoved’ the creek a bit to the south and away from the canal. I was thrilled at the discovery.
At that time I also thought I had “discovered” a lock site, (Max had mentioned Lock #28 was also in this area). Just to the north east of the earthen wall, was a site that had all the characteristics of a long-abandoned canal lock, narrow channel with higher earth walls, and numerous small bits of stone scattered about the channel. I later did find the location of Lock #28 was a good distance west, and I have never determined just what this site was, if anything.
The memorable part of this hike, though, was that, shortly after continuing on toward the east from this spot, I got terribly disoriented and “turned around”, and dismally LOST! East of this point there didn’t appear to be the clear trail of the pipe-line walkers that I had been following all the way in from Route #800. I was forced to leave the line of canal and move slightly to my right (south) and skirt the creek. Then, in trying to move back north to pick up the canal line again, I ran into, almost literally, an earthen embankment with some stone rip-rap running in front of me, but running at an angle that didn’t say, “canal embankment”.
I got to the top of this embankment and found a water filled channel in front of me running off to my right and left. I seem to remember following it to my right for a short distance and discovering it ended at a fast moving stream – the Big Sandy! What was that doing here? That discovery completely turned me around. If I had been following the canal, this embankment should have paralleled the canal, not run into it!
I retraced my steps and got to a point where I could cross the channel and I tried to move as directly east as I could. But I found nothing except a tree-choked area, with the towpath embankment turned into an 1899 railroad lineii, no old canal channel, nothing but this embankment and a flat, tree-filled expanse.
But, I did hear the sound of what I thought was a “one-lung” gasoline motor, chugging away slowly, but steadily somewhere to my left front and above me – up on that ridge to my left somewhere. I turned to my left and began climbing a rather steep embankment. I kept climbing and the “chug, chug, chug” kept chuging. I had quite a climb, but I finally achieved my objective, an automatic and unattended oil pumping station. AND, there was an access road leading away from it. I was overjoyed. An access road probably would lead me to a real road and I could find out where I was in relation to the shopping center and my car. I followed it. It was a long trek, but down-hill and I believed north. Finally, I came out to a site I was familiar with – an octagon-shaped building that I had passed several times. It was located on the north side of Route #183, maybe three miles east of the Cross-Roads Shopping Center!
So now I knew where I was and could at least now head in the right direction to retrieve my car. I did finally reach the shopping center and my Mustang. I got into it, gratefully and tired. And went home!
I’ve made a number of additional hikes into that area over the years and discovered that the embankment was actually the remains of the Sandy & Beaver’s western division Dam No. 9 and that east of that point, for nearly a mile, the canal had been in slack water, so the only evidence of it was a towpath/railroad bed hugging the line of the steep hillside to the north. And that towpath/railroad bed hadn’t been very easy to see with all the trees in the area.
Still, I’ve never forgotten that particular hike and that particular feeling of being completely lost with my sense of direction utterly gone. Fortunately, that is a feeling I never had again while hiking.
i These notes are being typed in February of 2020, ,many, many years after the original hike, from a few memories and several references to this hike in subsequent hike notes.
ii The line of canal from just east of Sandyville toward the east (with a sidecut branch to Magnolia) was covered by a Baltimore & Ohio branch line constructed in 1899 to service the Magnolia Coal Company and also [provided a “combine Car” passenger service to a “station: adjacent to the Elson Mill in Magnolia. This branch line was operational until 1922.