Article

Accompanied by the Past:
Heritage Hike: Fort Frederick to Hancock

by Karen Gray

The road that passes Fort Frederick and continues down to the river, crosses the canal on a bridge over one of four stop gates in the canal's longest level: the fourteen-mile level between Lock 50 at Four Locks (mile 109.32) and lock 51 near Hancock (mile 122.6). These stop gates are small structures compared to the great stop gates that provide passage of the canal and towpath through a guard wall at Dam 4 and just above Lock 16 at Great Falls. Those gates are designed not only to hold water in the canal behind the gates, but also to close the gap in important guard walls that protect the canal downstream from flood waters.

Big Pool Bridge and Stop Gate Photo courtesy of NPS

On the other hand, the four stop gates on this level are built only to hold back water in the canal. They are at McCoys Ferry (mile 110.29), at the lower end of Big Pool where the hike starts (mile 112.4), at the upper end of Big Pool (at mile 114.21), and at the lower end of Little Pool (mile 119.71). The walls of the stop gates are 18 ft. apart, thus only 3 ft. wider than the locks, and required boatmen to steer carefully in passing through them. A high pedestrian bridge with steep steps on both sides once existed at this point (when there was no road requiring a road bridge).

These gates were closed by placing large planks into the slots on both sides. This would be necessary if something caused the canal to lose water or, if the water level below the gate were being deliberately lowered for some reason, such as effecting repairs. Being able to retain water at various points along this level was critical in such circumstances not only because of its great length, but also because of the unusual construction methods used in the Big Pool and Little Pool sections.

At Big Pool the engineers built the towpath berm on a low natural ridge, but did not build a berm on the land side. Instead, they allowed canal water to form a small lake between the towpath and where the land began to rise across a low-lying flat area. Originally, Big Pool was a mile and a half long (mile 112.5 to 113.94), but the pool has been shrinking and is smaller now.

Big Pool Construction 1889 Photo courtesy of NPS

Similar construction occurred at Little Pool (119.84 to 120.75), where some of the towpath berm utilized a long, narrow island near the Maryland shore. Again, canal water filled the area between it and the rising land a short distance away, creating a sizable pool that is, like Big Pool, a popular fishing site today.

In the winter when most of the canal was drained, Big and Little Pools were not drained, as filling them again in the spring would have required a great deal of water and time. Thus the stop gates at their lower ends were important to holding water in the pools during the winter closure.

Another factor made the stop gates on this level crucial: this is an area notoriously prone to sinkholes created when pockets in the underlying limestone collapse. If walkers watch carefully, they will see signs of several such sinkholes in the prism of the canal along this section. In the operating days of the canal such holes could collapse a berm or drain large amounts of water into the hole, making closure of the nearest gate upstream critical, in order that as little water as possible would be lost above the breach.

In the great flood of 1889 that put the C&O Canal Company into bankruptcy, long sections of the towpath in the Big Pool and Little Pool stretches washed out. The restoration of the Big Pool towpath berm and the channel for the boats beside it was especially a major project, and one that resulted in an important legacy: a series of photographs showing horses, men, wagons, scoops, and many details of laborers' dress and tools, etc. These images are often used today in exhibits and waysides to illustrate canal construction and repairs.

At mile 113.5 a masonry spillway is located just above an earlier masonry waste weir-both structures needed to control water levels in Big Pool.

Above Big Pool (mile 114.02) the towpath passes under a trestle that connected the Western Maryland Railroad with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad mainline across the river. The current trestle was built after the canal closed and therefore has a lower clearance (only 9 ft.) than would have been allowed when boats needed to pass underneath. This line is now part of the CSX system.

Licking Creek Aqueduct Photo courtesy of NPS

Walkers cross the Licking Creek Aqueduct at mile 116.04. This is the first of the six single-arch aqueducts along the remaining 68.5 miles to Cumberland. The five aqueducts below it all have three-arches except for the Monocacy, which has seven. The Licking Creek aqueduct was built of Tonoloway gray limestone obtained from a quarry one-half mile north on the banks of Licking Creek. Stone for the sheeting was boated up the Potomac River some seven and a half miles from the limestone quarry at Prathers Neck.

Begun in July 1835 by contractor Richard Holdsworth, it was reassigned in February 1837 to Enos Childs who then had to abandon his first contract in late October. Within two weeks Childs entered into a new contract under which the aqueduct was completed in May 1838.

Holdsworth was a major contractor on the canal, working on locks and lockhouses near Seneca between 1829 and 1832, often in partnership with a Mr. Isherwood. The Holdsworth-Isherwood partnership built the Seneca Aqueduct. Enos Childs also had other aqueduct connections, as he held the contract for the Fifteen Mile Creek Aqueduct for about 16 months in 1838-1839 before abandoning it.

Thomas Hahn reports that the NPS Milepost 117 above Licking Creek Aqueduct is misplaced, and that the error in the NPS mileage continues to near lock 51. Mileages in Hahn's Towpath Guide (which even the Park Service came to use), are, in fact, those arrived at by Orville Crowder, who measured the entire towpath in 1959 with a surveyors wheel. Crowder's notes on the canal became the basis for the Towpath Guide, and Crowder was a main force behind the creation of the Level Walker program that was so important to monitoring towpath conditions and intrusions before the national park legislation was finally passed. This program still provides the Association with its most complete independent picture of conditions up and down the canal.

About a mile below Lock 51 in 1836, Dutch and "country born" (i.e. native American) laborers hired by contractors G. M. and R. W. Watkins were attacked by a group of Irish and beaten with such ferocity that even ten months later the contractors were having difficulty finding men willing to work for them.

At mile 122.59 and 122.89, walkers pass Locks 51 and 52 for which, in 1835, Robert Brown was awarded the construction contract. In 1837, however, both contracts were reissued, with William Storey taking over and completing the work on Lock 51 while Brown completed Lock 52. Brown also built the Tonoloway Aqueduct 1835-39. It is just above Lock 52 and is connected to it by a continuous stone wall.

In 1865, A. B. Tancey was given permission to establish a grocery and feed store at Lock 52 and a year later. Theophiles Barnett was given permission to build a grocery and feed store at Lock 51. It isn't clear that both stores actually operated so close to each other then or later, but Harlan Unrau found a record for some 27 such stores being located along the canal at various times and places. They would have served both boat people and locals.

The lockkeeper at Lock 51 was likely often hired to take care of both Locks 51 and 52, being paid more for the double task. He could have hired additional help with the extra money, or kept it if he and his family were able to handle both locks. In 1839, when these locks first opened with the completion of the canal to Dam 6, Henry Rowland was the lockkeeper and was paid $200 a year, while keepers assigned to only one lock earned $150. After Henry, an Upton Rowland was lockkeeper on these two locks until 1848.

On the berm near Lock 52 is the Bowles House, now Hancock's C&O Canal Visitors Center. Walkers should stop to visit the house, learn its history and enjoy the view from its porch before walking the last mile into Hancock.

At mile 122.96, above Lock 52, walkers cross the Tonoloway Creek Aqueduct, locally called the Bowles Aqueduct. This aqueduct is notable for the use made of the natural rock outcroppings on both sides of the creek. On the upstream side these serve for the aqueduct's abutment, resulting in an irregular arch. On the lower berm, where there is a waste weir, the spillway is on the natural rock.

In 1865 the Division Superintendent reported a bad break in the aqueduct requiring major repair. In 1870 Chief Engineer William R. Hutton warned that the aqueduct was "cracked in every direction, and in places has come to pieces, and fallen out." Also, the walls had bulged requiring iron rods to be placed through the work to strengthen it. During the winter of 1873-74 a wooden trunk was installed so that the berm parapet spandrels and arch could be repaired without affecting navigation when it resumed in the spring.

The berm wall was rebuilt in 1874, but in 1887 Superintendent E. S. Mulvany saw the need for repair of the wooden trunks that had been put in the Tonoloway and Sideling Hill Aqueducts because of the previous collapse of their berm parapets. An engineer visiting the site in 1950 reported that the spandrels had fallen, and stones in the arrel of the arch showed "considerable disintegration." Now a footbridge takes the towpath across the aqueduct.

At mile 125.26, (the Hancock town line), Canal Towage Company boat No. 57, built in 1909 and captained by Ab Davis, lay derelict after the closure of the canal in the spring of 1924. Although all signs of the boat are now gone, it has been immortalized in its documentation by National Park Service staff in 1939. Those formal drawings are now widely published and represent our best record of the standard C&O Canal freighter so familiar from photographs of the canal during its last decades.

At mile 123.84 in the heart of Hancock, is the P.T. Little Warehouse, an important remnant from the canal days. At 123.92, a basin on the berm 150 ft. long and 40 ft. wide, was cut off in 1903 by the construction of the Western Maryland Railway extension from Big Pool to Cumberland.