Muncy Historical Society and Museum of History

Pennsylvania Canal Along the Susquehanna

BY WILLIAM MARION SCHNURE

Presented before the Northumberland Historical Society February 14, 1947

Today, parallel to and close by the boundary line between Northumberland and Snyder Counties can be found the ruins of what was once the most important channel of commerce in this part of the State of Pennsylvania. Man-made, it was a section of a system of canals in the Keystone State that totaled approximately six hundred and six miles, according to Alvin F. Harlow in his admirable book entitled "Old Towpaths". Built locally in the late Twenties of the last century, it was abandoned hereabouts in 1901.

What were the reasons for its construction and what caused its early demise?

The great influx of white settlers into the regions east of the Alleghenies following the Revolutionary War, composed mostly of home seekers, traders, adventurers and hunters, caused settlements to spring up as if by magic in this vast area. These settlements were at first invariably on the banks of navigable streams or within comfortable distance for easy access to the best mode of travel which was by water.

The trails, beaten flat by foot of man and horse from the new influx of travelers, usually were created years before by wild beasts and savages. They generally followed the path of least resistance which meant along the banks of streams. This meant that the trails and roads soon became congested and worn-out. The streams nearby soon were dotted with canoes, batteaux, dugouts, rafts and other crude crafts, only stopped when snow and ice mantled the earth in winter.

Water traffic increased year by year as hundreds of craft worked their way down and up streams through the hazards of rocks, riffles, falls, rapids and low water. Millions of logs floated down from the forests. Trading posts, taverns, stores, landings, and ferries soon dotted the banks of streams in number according to their strategic location. It was soon evident that the natural obstructions in the main streams made navigation too hazardous and slow to be efficient. The periodic freshets, uncontrolled floods and storms created havoc with losses of craft, cargoes and even lives.

Artificial channels in the streams were beyond financial ability and those attempted were at the best only temporary, as floods soon ripped and tore to nature's own course. Also dams would go the same way in the course of a few years due to insufficient engineering and maintenance.

As the population increased along the Atlantic seaboard, sentiment grew here and there in favor of canals based on their extensive use in the "old country" across the ocean.

Probably the first suggestion for a canal in this country appears to have been made by Louis Joliet in 1673 who wrote of the possibilities of a water channel connecting Lake Michigan and the Illinois River. Almost two centuries passed before this dream became a reality.

As early as 1676, agitation arose for what became in 1914 the Cape Cod Canal across the eight mile neck of that peninsula. At the same time-1679-the present Chesapeake and

Delaware Canal was being promoted. It was opened for shipping in 1830.

William Penn, in 1690, proposed a canal from the Delaware River to the Susquehanna River, to open the interior to coastal trade. Finally in 1762, David Rittenhouse, astronomer, and Dr. William Smith, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, made the first canal survey in America.

It followed the route later taken by the Union Canal between Reading through Lebanon along the Swatara Creek to Middletown on the shores of the Susquehanna.

On July 4, 1817, at Rome, New York, the first spade of earth was turned by DeWitt Clinton for the Erie Canal -the first major canal project in this country for water travel. This canal opened the first bypass of the barriers of the Alleghenies into the Midwest while the State of New York and the seaport of New York City felt their first real commercial boom.

Baltimore, down in Maryland, realized this "Big Ditch" as it was called, to be a threat to its business and soon created the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal to the foothills of the mountain barrier into the Ohio region and a few years later promoted a railroad to overcome the shortcomings of the canal, that is today the Baltimore and Ohio System. Philadelphia, and Pennsylvania in general, now between the two rivals, took steps to check the loss of prestige.

Soon the Commonwealth was building its State Railroad from Philadelphia to Columbia to connect with the State Canal from Columbia into Pittsburgh which utilized the Portage Railroad over the Alleghenies.

Ground was broken on July 4, 1826 for a comprehensive system of water highways and soon over five thousand men were at work. Imported Irish, supplemented by local farm and town laborers, dug out the channels by hand and horsepower, using shovels, plows, scoops, drags and dumpcarts.

Naturally the Susquehanna Valley was stirred by the canal agitation, as to which side the canal would be constructed north from the junction with the Juniata, at the dam at Clark's Ferry, near what is now Amity Hall. An impartial survey showed that a canal along the east shore north to the Forks of the Susquehanna would cost $1,018,758 against $472,298 along the west shore which determined why the canal was built to a completion in 1829 as we know it today.

With the Irish came the Catholic Church, both coming and going with little traces left today. Liverpool claims that a church was in existence at that town for several years and in Selinsgrove a small brick church stood on the Isle of Que on what is now East Bough Street at or near the present George Rine nursery. About a score of years later, the abandoned structure was demolished and its brick used for a sexton's house at the rear of the new Lutheran (now Trinity) Church. Later it became a parochial school, plus an armory for a company of militia, until demolished to give way to an enlargement program. Other brick was used to build the William Gaugler property on the southwest corner of Market and Sassafras Streets.

As a part of the Susquehanna Division of the Pennsylvania Canal, 40 miles from the Juniata to the Forks of the Susquehanna, this channel of commerce, in common with practically every other canal, nation-wide, was a financial failure. Pennsylvania put into its state system over $24,000,000, not counting the other systems mostly in the anthracite regions, built by private enterprise. It never received in a single year over $700,000 in tolls – an amount insufficient to pay interest not to mention the upkeep.

Millions were spent by the various states from Maine to Georgia and into the Midwest as far as Illinois. States became financially broke and although the canals brought a period of prosperity to the communities traversed, the Iron Horse was already threatening their usefulness.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in a few years sold its canal and railroad to its rival-the new Pennsylvania Railroad-to avoid being paralleled and to rid itself of a financial headache.

The canal era lasted, with a few exceptions, nationwide, until the late Eighties and the early Nineties.

But tonight we are especially interested locally. Let us take a seat on the deck of a southbound boat at a wharf at Northumberland on one of the two branches that meet here. It is four o'clock in the morning with all the locks open for traffic. Eight o'clock tonight will find them closing. There are no restrictions between locks, so many boats keep traveling until the late hours before tying up.

The Captain has his clearance papers and we pull away from the shore, the mules of our eighty foot boat taking up the slack in the tow line, the mule boy switching them into action. Our boat is about fourteen feet wide and about eight and one-half feet deep. It will hold about 130 tons of mine coal. The canal is about forty feet wide at the top and usually from six to perhaps eight feet deep.

We are off. Ahead of us we see the lock gates open like folding doors from the centre of the canal outward. We float slowly into the lock between solid stone walls, the boat being snubbed by the crew and the gateman at convenient posts. Ahead the water seems far below us but gradually we feel our boat sinking as the walls of the lock come up on both sides till they over tower us. We see and hear rushing water that seeks the opening traps and gates beneath until we settle and the gates slowly open ahead and we find ourselves down on a new level, the other gates behind us holding back our former channel.

We are now down on slack water in the West Branch. Then the mules again take up the tug on the rope, climbing to the covered walk along the south side of the old Red Bridge. Blue Hill towers ahead, probably breaking through the early morning mist from off the river, the sun behind us over Catawissa Hill. We float across the shadowed water mirroring the wooden structure above us that resounds with the rat-a-tat of the tugging mules' iron shod feet on the walkway.

Down off the bridge trot the mules, keeping to the narrow towpath which hugs the dirt road that likewise crowds against the rocky bank for room. Our boat is pulled into a channel behind a projecting wall of rip-rap stone. Opposite upon the left is the mouth of the North Branch with Packer's Island in midstream and Sunbury's River Street with its shady trees tell of a busy town behind them. Less than a hundred years have gone by when this spot resounded to the roar of the sunrise and sunset gun, with its bugles rising from the garrisoned fort, now given over to farm land.

Smoke from the huge carshop stack behind the site of the fort and the sound of rumbling trains brings us to realize that time has moved on.

Two short miles of hard towing by the mules bring us to an overhead bridge that seems to stand out in the river to nowhere. We notice an opening in the dike or "berm bank" that has separated our channel from the river. It is through this opening that the canal boats and barges are towed to the Sunbury shore where the coal from Shamokin can be loaded. This is the mouth of the main channel of the canal fed by the slack water from the river we have been floating on.

Suddenly the mules scramble to the left up onto the outside walk of the structure. We are at the Winding Bridge and here the towpath shifts from the hill side to the east or left bank of the channel we see ahead.

How will the mules negotiate this shift, we are asked. Watch carefully. It is simple after you see it. The mules walk slowly across the wooden railing side, the tow rope now dangling down into the water as the boat nears the bridge. The tow line is shifted from the right to the left side of the front of the boat, or the bow, by the Captain, and placed on the corresponding towing post.

The mules now make another left turn and scramble down under the abutment of the bridge and step over the slack rope lying on the towpath. Easy?

The slack is taken up again as we pass the Ferry Hotel or the Upper Ferry House that banks itself up against the rocks with the dirt road at its front porch leading northward along the hill or unto the bridge.

Here a landing allows a steam ferry and flat to work back and forth from a landing at the foot of Spruce Street in Sunbury on the opposite shore.

A short half mile finds us at the first lock on the main branch of the canal. It is Shamokin Dam, built at the west abutment of the structure that crosses the river on the old Shamokin Riffles as this ledge has been called since maps have been drawn and legends preserved.

This dam has formed a lovely pool by backing the surface of the broad river past Sunbury and for a mile or two beyond Northumberland on both of the branches. It has also created a mine coal shipping dock below Chestnut Street where the first railroad hereabouts ran their tracks out over canal boats to be filled with the black diamonds brought first by horsepower and then by steam from the booming Shamokin mines, twenty miles to the east. We are soon through the lock, after having probably taken time to step or run to the adjacent tavern hard by for a glass of snops or a plug of tobacco. We have to act fast as it is only a case of a very few minutes ere the boat sinks between the stone walls.

We are now on the "Eleven Mile" level, past numerous landings and through the guard or check lock at Hettrick's Store. This lock has only one gate, normally open except during very high water, when it is closed and a bypass or "wicket" gate regulates the leveling of the heights of the water southward from here.

Across the river we pick up beautiful rolling wall-like hills that follow us mile for mile for the rest of our journey.

A long two miles follow till we pass through a heavily rip-rapped section known as the "Mud Dam". This is the former mouth of Penns Creek at the head of the Isle of Que – this stream having been diverted south through the village of Selinsgrove, using a small stream's channel for its new bed. This detour solved an aqueduct problem that we will pick up later.

Now to our right a huge basin filled with logs looms and then a busy saw mill, named for its builders from the State of Maine. It is a busy spot.

A wicket gate allows logs, floated through the Shamokin Dam lock or from some freshet or flood, to be taken into the basin for the hungry saws.

Then comes a waste-weir on the right berm bank to allow water to be left out into Penns Creek, a few feet away, at the end of the boating season or when otherwise necessary. Across the creek is the Isle of Que Mill and Dam, dating prior to the Revolution.

Just below we pass under a railroad bridge unless we are boating before the Seventies.

Now we are approaching the village of Selinsgrove, with its warehouses on both sides of the canal, a basin for "parking" idle boats and also private basins or docks alongside warehouses and at right angles to the canal itself. Pine Street Bridge arches over us for a moment as we pass the packet boat wharf at this street. Warehouses, boat yards, coal piles, mule stables and more saw mills and and another boat yard speaks of an industrious community. Lines of farm wagons reach from the canal across the covered bridge into the town all waiting their turns to unload and load. Old inhabitants of those days claim that this line often reached out Pine Street as far as the present college campus.

Leaving the last boat yard at the Bough Street overhead, we now float along through a level farm land that extends for several miles ahead from the river to our canal banks. It is still the Isle of Que, of Indian tradition and one of the historic and picturesque spots along the entire Susquehanna Valley.

A mile further finds a huge pool on our left reaching out into a field so as to form a basin. This is a reservoir to store water for a dry season. Soon the mouth of Middle Creek is on our right with

a wire suspension bridge crossing Penns Creek for school children and farmers. Bake Oven Hill looms behind. To walk down the towpath to cross back to the main (dirt) road at Bake Oven and thence back home was a favorite walk in years gone by on Sunday afternoons. Now it is just too far to be walked.

A bend in the canal brings another of the numerous overhead bridges. Just beyond is a frame two-story combination warehouse and store. It is the well patronized Log Grocery and its mule stables. Here the packet boats changed their motive power if not done at Selinsgrove after their ten mile trot from Northumberland. Hardly a trace of this business stand remains today.

Another pull of a mile swings our boat to the right and out over Penns Creek through the three hundred foot aqueduct. It was a wonderful swimming pool, the towpath on one side, a plank railed walk on the other. The canal is here changing sides to let the creek empty into the Susquehanna short distance below at the foot of the Isle of Que. Here is beauty with the broad river rushing over Flurries Riffles – probably another French name – Hoover's Island beyond, Fisher's Ferry on the far bank and Mt. Mahanoy towering twelve hundred feet above the water and over fifteen hundred feet above sea level.

This is the first of the water gaps that we will pass through for fifty miles ahead. Where can you surpass such a series of parallel water-gaped ranges in our country?

Three miles more and Port Trevorton greets us, we having passed Dundore and its store that caters to the country far back over the hills. Port Trevorton is well named, with a combined railroad and driving bridge across the river to Trevorton Junction (now Herndon). Over this bridge are the tracks of the Trevorton Railroad, also known as the Zerbe Valley. They reach back to the Trevorton mines and bring its output to run out on a three track elevated trestle or wharf to be dumped into empty boats in the basin below. Traces of the bridge piers can be seen, the structure having been demolished at the opening of the Seventies after about fifteen years of service.

A shorter haul into Shamokin and the increased cost of tolls on the canal worked against Port Trevorton. Over this bridge in its life passed thousands of heads of live stock afoot on their way into the coal region markets around Pottsville. Over it backed the Northern Central (passenger) trains to and from Harrisburg, to connect with the packet boats out of Northumberland in the interim the "N. C. R." was being built ahead into Sunbury, accompanied by much blasting along the rocky faced hills north of Fisher's Ferry. This was in 1855.

A lock, at the end of the "Eleven Mile Level", two taverns, several stores, a combined telegraph office, post office and toll house, new houses on the upper street indeed made this a busy port, the land traffic having been augmented by the opening of the road through the Aqueduct narrows as a welcome bypass to the Sunbury-Carlisle "King's Highway" running back over the hills through Verdilla, since 1773.

The community park stands today on the site of the basin.

Locking through, the mules change towpath sides twice to get around the basin. It is two miles to the "Williams" Lock, named for General Edward C. Williams, who lived for many years in rural retirement along the old canal, monarch of all he surveyed, postmaster, proprietor of the village store and host extraordinary to the countryside.

In 1846 he had recruited a company, the Cameron Guards, in Harrisburg and with himself as captain marched over the mountains to Pittsburgh in seven days, where they boarded a steamer for New Orleans and the Mexican War. When the citadel of Chapultepec was stormed, Captain Williams had a flag wrapped around his body, which he unfurled, the first American flag to fly from this castle of the Montezumas. It is said to have already been an historic flag, "The Trenton Flag" used in the Revolution, which the captain had "borrowed" from the State Library.

Another mile to the village of Independence with its old tavern, and its weather beaten signboard swinging in the wind, on which had once been brightly emblazoned the coat-of-arms of the Commonwealth with its motto, "Virtue, Liberty and Independence." As its bright colors weathered away, only the last word remained legible, so that the boatmen came to regard Independence as the name of the place. A short two miles brings us to the ferry across the river to Georgetown (now Dalmatia) and another mile to McKee's Half Falls, where the river tumbles over picturesque rapids. A store and hotel make this canal stop very popular. A short two miles finds us at Mahantango Creek lock, the aqueduct crossing the southern county line of Snyder. On the opposite bank of the river a mile or two southward, another Mahantango Creek enters the river marking the southern boundary of Northumberland County.

We are nearing our day's dreamboat ride. Across the creek on the right bank of the canal is a wharf in front of a unique three story brick building-store, post office and tavern known through the years as "Weiser's Folly" that stands today like a bare shell, empty, but filled with memories of the past, as the sound of the mule bells, the captain's horn blowing for the lock, the shouts of the men as the boat ties to the wharf, reverberate back and forth in the empty rooms . . . all a part of Yesterday's pageant, gone forever with the canal, and its colorful panoramic recollections.

There is much ahead and much behind us of interest to the seeker of more about this abandoned path of travel in its heyday a century ago.

A trip by automobile will make it possible to trace it mile after mile with sections obliterated by Time and Progress. On those parts, railroad beds, highway embankments, civic improvements have left no trace of the canal era. Permanent records exist. To those the seeker must go for details.

Hurriedly for a brief picture of the remaining route of our quest, we will find a lock at the end of "Two Mile Level" from Mahantango, at "Peewee Nest", or the Dry Saw Mill lock, at the upper end of the Narrows north of Liverpool. Two miles further is the Upper Liverpool Lock, now falling in ruins along the Trail, two miles further through Liverpool comes the Lower Lock, two more to Mt. Patrick, two to Montgomery Ferry, four to New Buffalo and four to the Junction (Amity Hall). You can find all but the last right along the highway. The same holds good for Raisner's (Richter's Farm) Lock. The Clark's Ferry Lock is gone but the east end still can be seen. Speeceville, Dauphin, Rockville, Harrisburg weigh lock near Market Street, Steelton, Highspire and Royalton, where the Union Canal enters, have lost out to Time. Falmouth and Bainbridge are hard by the river, the latter with a single lock with a drop of twenty feet and known as the "Hogpen" Chickies Rocks and Columbia are a group hard hit by newer improvements by the Pennsy. Here we are at the south end of the State Canal. Cross the new highway bridge to Wrightsville to see the mouth of the Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal-forty-five miles long into Havre de Grace, Md. with forty-five locks. Modern hydro-electric dams have covered most of this once well-used route to Baltimore's docks with the aid of steam tugs fleeting canal boats in groups. Tradition says that the immense wharf rats that predominated in our canal towns found their way onto boats in that seaported harbor guarded by Fort McHenry. The same applies to a good many other seaport towns touched by local boats.

To further outline the canal along the Susquehanna requires that we double back to Lock Haven. It was seventy-four and two-third miles into Northumberland, with 19 locks, 16 levels, three slack waters, four dams, one river, according to Captain Baker, of Espy.

I further quote:* "From Bald Eagle Dam to Lock Haven was a cross cut canal, with one level, one lock and covering a distance of three miles. Next, on the route to the south, came the outlet lock at Lock Haven. From there the canal boat would cross the Susquehanna a distance of one-third mile. One canal dam was situated at Lock Haven. From the slack water there to Guard Lock, two miles were traveled. Then came a 10-mile level to Jersey Shore. "Yet another level and another lock were passed in a two-mile trip to Larry's Creek, with three miles to Wild Man's Lock. To the head of the Nine-Mile Level, the distance was one mile. From this level to the lock at Williamsport, was a distance of nine miles.

"Leaving Williamsport, to Loyalsock Creek, was five miles. Then the boats would cross the Loyalsock Creek Dam at Montoursville. From the Slackwater to the head of Wide Water Level was one more mile, and to Joe Phillips's Lock, two miles. Then on to Wash Taylor's Lock, five more miles, followed by a very short level.

"From the Muncy Level to Port Penn was three miles, followed by an outlet lock into Muncy Dam of one-third mile. This lock had two lifts. From the Dam slackwater to the head of the Seven was one mile, with seven more miles to Watsontown. On to Milton was four more miles.

From Sander's Lock to the one above Northumberland was seven miles, with one more mile to Northumberland. "Thus in this journey from Lock Haven to Northumberland there were 19 locks, 16 levels and three slack (* Selinsgrove Times, Sept. 3, 1942) waters, four dams and the river crossed once, a total distance of seventy-four and two-thirds miles.

"The river at Lock Haven fed the canal to Loyalsock Creek, while the Creek fed the canal to Muncy Dam. Muncy Dam fed the canal the remaining distance to Northumberland. There was an outlet lock at Williamsport to the River. In the Milton Level to three-fourth of a mile above Shaner's at Montandon, was the Lewisburg crosscut canal, with a draw-bridge at the P. R. R. Montandon- Bellefonte track.

"There was a lock at Farrandsville, about four miles up the river above Lock Haven."

The North Branch extended from Northumberland to Athens, Pa., where it connected with New York's Chemung Canal. The section north of Nanticoke was abandoned shortly after a severe flood in 1862. The Lehigh Valley Railroad uses much of its former bed. From Nanticoke Basin into Norry there existed locks at Beach Haven, Berwick, Stoneytown, Bloomsburg, Rupert, Danville, Upper Norry, I mile above the Junction, a distance of 50 odd miles.

We cannot revive the canals. Let us perpetuate them in book or stone or bronze or concrete for coming generations. The "ragin' canarl" deserves a niche in Pennsylvania's transportation annals.

Canalling in the Old Days

Pirates along the Pennsylvania Canal