Pre-Construction Surveys for the C&O Canal

By the second decade of the 19th century it was becoming clear that the Potomac Company was not only destined to fail financially but also in its goal of making the Potomac a major water route for goods and produce from the valleys and mountains to the west. Despite the company’s works that included improved navigation channels in the river itself and a series of skirting ca-nals by which boats could bypass the worst rapids and falls from the Harpers Ferry area to Georgetown, it was deeply in debt and unable to significantly increase the limited number of days each year when the Potomac was reasonably navigable.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the idea of a continuous waterway up the Potomac Valley officially appeared in 1816 when Virginia’s Board of Public Works (VA-BPW)—newly estab-lished largely as a result of the efforts of state legislator Charles Fenton Mercer—recommended a connection between the Potomac and the Ohio by a navigable canal. Although Mercer moved on to the Federal congress in 1818 (where he would serve until 1839), on January 8, 1820, the General Assembly of Virginia asked the BPW to examine the waters of the Potomac with a view to building a canal between the Potomac and the Ohio. It is likely that this request was in re-sponse to a recent request by the Potomac Company for help in determining how it could best to meet the requirements the company’s charter. (Ward, p. 39)

The VA-BPW appointed Thomas Moore to conduct the survey. Moore’s was “the earliest survey to determine the practicability of a continuous canal throughout the valley of the Poto-mac.” (Sanderlin, p. 40) In his report, officially submitted December 17, 1820, Moore discussed possible routes from the North Branch of the Potomac (today the main stem of the river) or its tributaries to the Cheat and Youghiogheny Rivers, by either of which he had determined a route to the Ohio at Pittsburgh was possible. His analysis of the Potomac section detailed the amount of fall that would have to be overcome by lockage and it estimated the cost of a canal “from Georgetown to the coal banks above Cumberland” (likely meaning the mouth of Georges Creek upstream from Cumberland) at $1,114,300. (Bacon-Foster, Appendix F)

This survey led to the establishment of a joint Virginia and Maryland commission that both analyzed the state of the Potomac Company and undertook a new survey led by Thomas Moore (representing Virginia) and Isaac Briggs (representing Maryland). Beginning on July 15, 1821, the Moore-Briggs survey party examined the Potomac from Cumberland upstream to the mouth of the Savage River, from which they sought a route to the Monogahela. Unfortunately, in Sep-tember Moore became ill and died after a short illness. Of his death, historian George Washing-ton Ward would write:

The death of Mr. Moore, which followed within a week or tend days after his retirement, undoubtedly marks a turning point in the history of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal project. Had this able and efficient officer, already an authority on the topography of the Potomac region, lived to give practical and immediate direction to the eager yet half-jealous interest of the states concerned, there is every reason to believe that the canal would have been in operation between Georgetown and Cumberland before 1826.” (Ward, p. 43)

In December Briggs resumed the survey and in a report dated May 3, 1822 he estimated a cost of $1,574,954 for a canal that would be 30 ft. wide at the surface, 20 ft. wide at the bottom, and 3 ft. deep. (Ward, p. 45) The report was transmitted to Maryland and Virginia on December 19, 1922. On January 23, 1823, the VA-BPW submitted to the Virginia legislature a report based on the Briggs survey that put the total cost “with contingencies” at $2 million. (Bacon-Foster, p. 209)

On February 22, 1823, Virginia passed a law incorporating the Potomac Canal Company but also requiring Maryland consent. When the required legislation failed to be passed by Maryland, meetings in support of the canal began to be held, culminating in the great canal convention at the Capitol November 6–8, 1823 (out of which the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal name emerged). The extensive political pressure developing with these events contributed to the passage of the General Survey Act of 1824 that would not only allow the President (at the time James Monroe) to use military surveyors for civilian projects of national interest, but also appropriated $30,000 to fund such surveys.

Among the first to benefit from the General Survey Act was the proposed Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. By April 1825, four U.S. Corps of Topographical Engineer survey teams were at work—one under Major John J. Abert working along the Potomac (known as the eastern sec-tion), two working on routes from the upper Potomac through the mountains to the Ohio (known as the mountain and western sections), and a fourth looking at routes from the Ohio to the Great Lakes (referred to as the Ohio and Erie section). (Ward, p. 78) The latter section would result in a circular navigable waterway from the Chesapeake Bay via the Potomac to the Ohio, the great lakes, and even New York City via the newly completed Erie Canal and Hudson River route.

Maryland finally confirmed Virginia’s charter for the canal on January 31, 1825. A prelimi-nary report from the government engineers made on February 14, 1825 that confirmed Moore’s opinion that a canal connecting the upper Potomac with the Youghiogheny or Monongahela was practicable, led to Congressional confirmation, signed by President Monroe on March 3, 1825.

The project became financially dubious however when the U.S. Board of Engineers final report was submitted to the President on October 23, 1826. That report estimated the cost for a canal 40 ft. wide on the surface, 28 ft. wide at the bottom, and 4 ft. deep, at $8,117,081.05 for the eastern (Potomac) section, $10,028,122.86 for the middle section to the Monongahela watershed, and $4,170,223.78 for the western section down to the Ohio—totaling $22,275,427.69. (Sander-lin, p. 55)

Concerned that the Board of Engineers estimate for the eastern section was so much larger than the $4–$5 million figure being given by canal proponents, a second session of the canal convention was quickly called for December 6–9, 1826 (coinciding with the transmission of the Board of Engineers report by the President to Congress). Participants in this convention set about discrediting the Federal survey by arguing that its estimated costs of labor, masonry, walling, and excavation were excessively high. Additionally, canal supporters undertook to fund their own survey, hiring former Erie Canal engineers James Geddes and Nathan Roberts. The Geddes-Roberts survey and report were completed in 1827 and their estimate of costs for the eastern sec-tion from tidewater to Cumberland was approximately $4.5 million.

It speaks to the success of the conventioneer’s strategy, that subscription books for canal company stock were opened on October 1, 1827 and in May, 1828, Congress subscribed $1 mil-lion to the stock of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company. Combined with Maryland’s ear-lier subscription of $500,000, and $1.5 million from the three cities of the District of Columbia (Washington, Georgetown, and Alexandria), the C&O Canal Company could then be organized during a meeting of stockholders in Washington, June 20–23, 1828.

-- Karen Gray

Bacon-Foster, Corra. Early Chapters in the Development of the Patomac Route to the West. Washington: Columbia Historical Society, 1912.
Sanderlin, Walter S. The Great National Project: A History of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1946
Ward, George Washington. The Early Development of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Project. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1899.

The source of this article is the C & O Canal Association’s newsletter, Along the Towpath, Vol. 36, No. 2, June 2004.

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