Pennsylvania

Canal History

Of all the canal states, Pennsylvania had the most canals built. However unlike the state-built Erie Canal in New York, many of Pennsylvania’s canals were privately built or sold to private interests as the cost of operations made them untenable. Many of the canals, such as the Delaware, and the Lehigh, were built as coal hauling operations, and many other states had canals that reached into the state to the coal traffic. The Morris and the Delaware and Hudson both received Pennsylvania coal and shipped it into New Jersey and New York.

This map is found in The Amazing Pennsylvania Canals by William Shank.
This map is from a 1969 leaflet. Like the Shank map, it also shows the Junction Canal and the never built Chenango Extension.

The “main line” canal was the cross state canal built as a competitor to New York’s Erie Canal. The canal was designed to make a shipping route between the Atlantic Ocean and the interior rivers, mainly the Ohio. The main line was a mix of canals, a portage railroad and a standard railroad. The system was open in the early 1830s and ran between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The state sold the route to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company in 1859. The railroad replaced the portage system and maintained the canals as traffic feeders. The canals were abandoned after the great storm of 1889 that caused so much damage across the state and also caused the flood that destroyed Johnstown. The other “dead-end” canals that connected to the main line were replaced by railroads. A good history of the western division of the canal can be found here.

The Delaware Division which consisted of both the Delaware and the Lehigh canals were privately run canals that shipped coal to the large cities along the coast. These canals were maintained and in operation up through the early 1930s.

The Schuylkill Navigation was a series of short canals, locks and dams that made the river suitable for boat traffic for 90 miles between Philadelphia and Port Carbon. The canal was put into use in 1825, the same year as New York’s Erie Canal, and navigation ended in 1931. Like most of Pennsylvania’s canals and navigations, the Schuylkill was mostly used for the transportation of coal.

Pennsylvania has a couple canal tunnels that were among the first built in the states. The Union Canal was the second tunnel in the states and is the oldest existing today. The Staple Bend tunnel along the Allegheny Portage Railroad was the first railroad tunnel built in the states. Both these can be visited today.

Due to the remoteness of the canals, many remains can be found today at numerous parks across the state. Be sure to check our interactive canal sites map or the listing of mapping projects on the Where, Who and How page, to help you find these sites.

Willard R Rhoades, The Pennsylvania Canal, 1960
Willard R Rhoades, The Pennsylvania Canal, 1960

CANAL GROUPS AND ORGANIZATIONS

The Pennsylvania Canal Society has been researching and educating about the states canals since 1966. They run twice a year field trips and publish their newsletter Canal Currents four times a year.

The National Canal Museum can be found in Easton and educates about the Lehigh and the Delaware canals, as well as all the canals of Pennsylvania. They also have a canal boat ride along the old Lehigh Canal.

The Friends of the Delaware Canal work with the Delaware Canal State Park in the maintenance and programming for the 59-mile-long Delaware Canal.

The Schuylkill Canal Association is a not-for-profit group of volunteers that provides historical interpretation and conducts activities at the Schuylkill Canal Park.

There is a second Schuylkill group made up of on-the-ground volunteers and enthusiasts who are working to preserve sites along the entire navigation. They can be found through their Facebook page.

The Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor preserves, interprets and leverages the nationally significant history of the over 165-mile transportation route between Wilkes-Barre and Bristol, Pennsylvania. The corridor has established a trail along the 165-mile route of the Lehigh and the Delaware valley, using both the old railroads and canal towpaths.

The Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site sits at Plane 6 of the ten that carried the canal boats up and over the mountains.

The Union Canal Tunnel Park is operated by the Lebanon County Historical Society. The park features the oldest existing tunnel in the states.

Repositories and Archives

This is a listing of some of the many archive holdings in the state. Sites will be added as the ACS is made aware of them. Some of the larger archives will offer digital holdings, but there will always be more in hidden collections then can be made available on-line. Do not over look the small volunteer-run historical societies along the routes of the canals as they will likely have canal related materials.

State-wide

The Pennsylvania State Archives note that they have one of the largest holdings of canal records in the US. They have put out this guide which you can download as a pdf (from our website). The guide is worth reading as it contains short histories on each canal.

The Pennsylvania State Archives also offer online canal maps. Download the pdf CanalMapDetailedGuide and then search it by using the CRTL-F feature. As of July 2022 not all the maps had been uploaded. In addition look for the county maps and atlases that were published between the dates 1850 to 1870s. These can be very helpful locating canals that were abandoned in the late 1800s.

The National Canal Museum also serves as the archives for Pennsylvania’s canals and the Pennsylvania Canal Society. They offer an online collections list.

The Berks (county) History Center has a sizable holding of canal related materials. The Berks History Center Research Library has an on-line database.

Union Canal

The Lebanon County Historical Society has a full set of 8½ x 14 Union Canal survey maps. These maps appear to have been made to track canal properties, and are lacking in detail.

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia has a complete set of survey maps for the Union Canal in various sizes in linen and ink.

Schuylkill Navigation

The Yocum Library at the Reading Area Community College hosted a project titled; The Schuylkill Navigation System Project At Reading Area Community College: Preservation and Dissemination of an Important Collection of Transportation Documents. Use this link to find the Schuylkill Navigation Maps. Note that the menu for the site is in the blue “canal” that lists; About the Project, Inventory, Reaches, etc.

Ben Varner’s Google Maps project shows most of the sites along the Schuylkill Navigation.

An excellent study of the Girard Canal can be found in Stuart William Wells 1989 Thesis. This 252 page study is perhaps the most comprehensive study of the longest canal in the Schuylkill Navigation.

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.

The Pennsylvania State Archives has Canal Map Books, 1810-1881, available on-line.

Note: Canals that are underlined have index sheets which are accessible by double clicking on the hyperlink.

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

Revised 04/29/2022