Next, we travel about 15 miles northwest of washington, d. C. To Great Falls Tavern Visitors Center where well take a boat ride to learn about the history of the chesapeake and ohio canal. I would like to introduce myself. My name is cassandra and i am a seasonal park ranger here at the chesapeake and ohio canal. I think were going to cast off here shortly, but well go ahead and start to give you a brief history of here on the canal. So it is called the chesapeake and ohio canal, but definitely doesnt reach the Chesapeake Bay or doesnt go all the way up to the ohio river, which is your intention of the canal when we first started building it july 4th of 1828. We wanted to try to connect the Eastern Shore with what was considered the west back then. The west was up in ohio, pennsylvania, that area. We wanted to connect pittsburgh to the Chesapeake Bay, and so what we did was we started building this canal. We tried earlier, it was George Washingtons dream to actually use the Potomac Riv
My name is cassandra sohida, and i am a seasonal park ranger here at the chesapeake and ohio canal. I think were going to cast off here shortly, but well go ahead and start to give you a brief history of here on the canal. So it is called the chesapeake and ohio canal, but definitely doesnt reach the Chesapeake Bay or doesnt go all the way up to the ohio river, which is your intention of the canal when we first started building it july 4th of 1828. We wanted to try to connect the Eastern Shore with what was considered the west back then. The west was up in ohio, pennsylvania, that area. We wanted to connect pittsburgh to the Chesapeake Bay, and so what we did was we started building this canal. We tried earlier, it was George Washingtons dream to actually use the Potomac River as to way a transport goods. Back then it seemed a reasonable thing to do so he had a canal system built by using locks to get around, and it wasnt a very reliable usage. It didnt actually have longtime use. It w
Museums and historic places. Next we travel about 15 miles northwest of washington, d. C. To Great Falls Tavern Visitors Center where we will take a boat ride to learn more about the of the the history of the chesapeake and the ohio canal. [foghorn] i would like to introduce myself. My name is cassondra, and i seasonal park ranger here at the am a chesapeake and ohio canal. I think we are going to cast off shortly. We are going to go ahead and start and give you a brief history of here on the canal. All right, it is called the chesapeake and ohio canal, but doesnt reach the Chesapeake Bay or go up to the ohio river, and when we first started building the canal in 1828, we wanted to try to connect the Eastern Shore with what was considered the west back then. The west was up in ohio, pennsylvania, that area. We wanted to connect pittsburgh to the Chesapeake Bay. So what we did was, we started building this canal. We tried earlier, it was George Washingtons dream to use the Potomac River
System built on that side by using locks to get around the great falls and the Potomac River. However, it wasnt a very reliable usage. It didnt actually have longtime use. It was very kind of broken, didnt work very well. We went ahead and took his dream and built a canal right next to the Potomac River so that we could use that water source but have something thats more controlled and reliable compared to the Potomac River because you took a boat over the falls, you probably wouldnt last very long. We ran this canal from georgetown to cumberland. We kind of ran into some problems. Also known as the appalachian mountains. We didnt really take that into consideration when we were building the canal itself, and so we kind of got stuck either going through the mountains or trying to go around. The canal is 184. 5 miles long. There are 75 locks, and were going to go through one of them today. Its lock 20 that were going to go through, and so what does the lock do . There is a very big elev
Through the various ports that were in between cumberland and georgetown. Used for cooking and goods like that. You would have goods coming from georgetown, as well. Georgetown was the factory town back then so you did have mills that would produce your grains and meats and you would have timber that would come from there. Any type of furniture, textile goods, clothing and all of that would be shipped up north to the various ports in between there. So this was a twoway traffic back then and there was only one tow path that we had that was used for our mules. So the question im sure you guys are all thinking of it, is how are two boats if theyre going in opposite directions going to pass each other . All right. We will all pretend that there is a boat coming downstream right now at us. Theyre loaded up with coal and so if theyre loaded up with coal that means theyre about 120 tons and were about 8 tons maybe. So that means they have the right of way because its a whole lot harder to sta