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![[image of flower]](../../ima/flowXS_04.gif)
Barges and Canals |
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See list of canals below. A canal is an artificial ("man-made") waterway used for transportation of goods and services, docking, irrigation, drainage, water supply (aqueduct), waterpower (raceway to a wheel or turbine), or ornamentation. (Note: Contrary to this definition, a few natural inlets are called "canals".) Canals supplement and connect rivers, lakes, lagoons, and straits to extend inland and intracoastal transportation. Rivers are sometimes "canalized"; that is, widened, straightened, dredged, and dammed to provide a navigable channel for boats and barges. Some short transportation canals were built to circumvent river falls and shoals. A few canals that run through level land and connect bodies of water at nearly the same levels need no locks to maintain different water levels at different land elevations. Most canals, however, run through land that varies considerably in elevation, which require locks to maintain water at land levels. Tunnels through mountains, inclined planes that drag boats over them, and canal aqueducts over valleys are built to maintain uniform canal water levels. Bridges and tunnels provide roadways for wheel transportation across canals. Before commercial steam and gasoline engines, locomotives, trucks, and automobiles were invented and roads improved, canals provided the cheapest means of transporting large amounts of goods ("bulk") and large numbers of people over long distances than the alternative of wagons and coaches pulled by animals on primitive roads. Thus, for over 100 years canals contributed greatly to immigration, business expansion, lower product costs and higher living standards. Canals were used throughout the world since prehistoric times. Transportation canals were used in Egypt, China and Mesopotamia beginning with the the 6th century BCE and in Europe since the 12th century CE. In the U.S., canals were built and used since the 1790s and continued through the middle of the 20th century. Most were located east of the Mississippi River in the United States and in the Quebec Province of Canada where canal water could be supplied from the abundant number of rivers and creeks. Canal use peaked in the middle of the 19th century and then gradually declined as cheaper and faster railroads replaced most of them. Only a few U.S. canals are used today, such as the Soo Canal between Lakes Superior and Huron and the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal between the Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware River. The first canal vehicles were barges containing goods or passengers that were pulled by horses and mules walking along a parallel dirt "towpath" for power. Later, tugboats powered by steam and gasoline engines pushed the barges, which obsoleted the towpaths, animals and animal drivers. When the barges entered large bodies of water at either end of the canal, sailboats and, later, tugboats either towed the barges or the freight or passengers were transferred into the boat. Large canals, such as the Suez, Panama, and St. Lawrence Seaway, accommodate ocean vessels containing the freight or passengers within their hulls, thereby eliminating the need for barges. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the lack of roads and bridges in North American made land transportation of large quantities of goods and large numbers of people over long distances expensive if possible at all. Barges and boats on rivers and canals offered the only cheaper alternative. The earliest U.S. and Canadian transportation canals were built to shunt trade between farms and favored cities , e.g., the Santee Canal in South Carolina to Charleston and the Merrimack Canal in Massachusetts to Boston. As western regions became more populated, canals were envisaged to transport furs and farm produce over long distances from west to east and manufactured goods from east to west. In the U.S., eastern businessmen sought the profits of the western trade that would otherwise go through the Great Lakes to Canada and Europe or through the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to the Caribbean and Europe. Also, U.S. government officials considered the canals a way to bind the people of the western states and territories to their young nation to the east rather than to Spain, France, and Great Britain when they controlled the western regions. Later, the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 proved that that transportation of troops and supplies in large quantities to western frontiers by wagons along primitive roads was too slow and expensive. Constrained by the technologies available at that time, canals provided the only way to improve east-west transportation. As new states were admitted to the U.S., canals would also be used to improve north-south transporation along the Gulf, Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, and the Great Lakes. This is the story of how canals contributed to the growth and prosperity of the U.S. List of the few extant and many extinct U.S. and Canadian transportation canals:
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