Flat Rock Dam, Manayunk Canal, Locks Number 68 & 69, Philadelphia PA
© Sara Jane Elk, Workshop of
the World (Oliver Evans Press, 1990).
The notion of inland
waterways to join markets and provide for the
transportation of goods was proposed in America before
the Revolutionary War. In fact, William Penn had
suggested connecting the Schuylkill and the Susquehanna
Rivers. 1
The engineering
of rivers and the construction of canals to provide
navigable routes, however, did not take place until the
Chesapeake and Delaware Canal some sixty years later.
Early efforts in Pennsylvania included a short canal
around the Conowingo rapids of the Susquehanna River in
1790, the work that began in 1792 to join the Schuylkill
and Delaware Rivers but stopped for the lack of financial
support, and the even more ambitious but never realized
proposal the next year to construct a canal between the
Delaware and the Susquehanna Rivers. In 1811, renewed
interest culminated in the successful endeavor to join
Reading with the Susquehanna by way of the Union Canal
which followed along the Tulpehocken and Swatara
Creeks. 2
The impetus to navigate the Schuylkill River came from
Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, partners in a rolling
mill and producers of nails and wire at the Falls of the
Schuylkill (East Falls). They viewed the anthracite coal
regions above Reading as an untapped resource, providing
their efforts could create a viable market. Anthracite
had no prior use as a fuel. The abundant American forests
provided ample supplies of wood and charcoal, and
bituminous coal, already in use in England, required
transportation from its beds in western Pennsylvania or
Virginia, thus limiting its widespread use.
3
After
considerable experimentation with anthracite in their
rolling mill, White and Hazard discovered, quite by
accident, how to use it. 4
To open the coal
region to the Philadelphia market, they looked to river
transportation as a method to significantly reduce the
cost of transporting the harden fuel down state. In 1815,
White organized the Schuylkill Navigation Company and
petitioned the State for the right to make the river
navigable. By then he had also successfully developed
cast iron grates for domestic stoves, further increasing
the potential market for the coal. Ironically though, at
the time of the incorporation of the company, White was
denied election as a commissioner. 5
He abandoned his
plans for the Schuylkill and with Hazard petitioned the
State again, this time to tame the Lehigh River. Although
construction finished on the Lehigh Canal after the work
on the Schuylkill, they were first to deliver anthracite
to the Philadelphia market. 6
Work began on the Schuylkill in 1816 with the first dam
at the Falls of the Schuylkill, and shortly thereafter
with the construction of the Flat Rock Dam, named for a
well-known natural rock formation occurring in the river
to the north of Manayunk. When finished in 1828, five
months before the completion of the Erie Canal, the
improvements to the river stretched 108 miles from the
Fairmount Dam in Philadelphia to Port Carbon, just below
Pottstown, and included a combination of methods to
navigate rapids, falls and shallow water. The 62 miles of
canals, 46 miles of slack water, or pools created by
dams, and one tunnel 385 feet long, successfully
navigated the fall of 588 feet along the river from the
coal beds to Philadelphia. 7
The route
contained a total of 120 locks; 29 of them were locks
with no lift.
The Legislature required that work begin on either side
of Reading and proceed on an equal basis. In 1821 the
company opened the route from Phoenixville to
Philadelphia, and by 1824 boats could travel the whole
distance. Cheap coal began to arrive in the region to
fuel steam engines across the city, stimulating the
industrial revolution in Philadelphia. Demand for
the "black stones" brought as much as two million tons of
coal out of Pennsylvania mines in 1845.
8
The construction of the Flat Rock Dam near Manayunk also
involved the excavation of a two mile canal through a
section of the river known as the “Dead
Waters,” located near Flat Rock.
9
It was, according
to Hagner:
“...a
kind of natural canal extending from above Flat Rock
bridge down to nearly where the main road cross the
canal. In high freshets the water flowed into it from
above, but generally it was a kind of pool or swamp into
which ran the little streams from the
hills...” 10
To navigate the fall in the river at Manayunk, locks
number 68 & 69 were completed as a part of the canal.
Number 69, near the present day Lock Street, although
minus much of its mechanism, still retains enough of its
metal fittings and its basic construction to reveal its
double chambered lock. The upper lock, a single chamber,
remains in much the same condition and is located near
the dam. The Manayunk canal and its locks opened for use
in 1819, despite bouts with lack of funding and poor
workmanship. Although no longer standing, toll houses
were located near each lock to collect the fare. Later a
hydro-electric generating station at the upper lock
produced electricity for the Philadelphia Transit
Company. Its structure and machinery remain as a ruin.
The construction of the canal and locks ended the shad
fishing industry in Manayunk, as it had along the whole
route to Port Carbon, thus all were not in favor of the
navigation company. In addition, the tow-path, begun in
1825 and originally located under the railroad spur on
the Schuylkill side of the canal, came as an
afterthought. 11
According to
Charles Hagner, the local residents had some problems
with it as well.
“There
was a farm, having a river front, where the owner's
cattle were daily driven to water. The company, without
asking his consent, made the tow-path along the shore,
and on his driving his cattle, as usual, to water them,
there came along an official of the Company, and fined
him five dollars for driving his cattle on the tow-path,
over his own ground, and for which he had never received
any compensation .
”
12
As a by-product to the construction of the canal, the
managers of the navigation company offered water power
along the canal for sale. Measured in numbers of inches,
the company charged $3.00 an inch per year.
13
Sales began
slowly, for as Hagner described, “Many persons came
to view the place as with the idea of purchasing power
and building mills, but were unwilling to run the risk of
freshets, and declined.” Captain John Towers
purchased the first site in 1819, followed by Hagner the
next year. They remained alone until 1821 when the pace
increased. By the beginning of 1822, 300 inches had been
sold and by the end of the year sales totaled 1,005
inches and the price had increased to $4.50 an
inch. 14
While the canal provided the impetus for manufacturing to
develop in Manayunk, other factors, such as the
introduction of labor saving devices, the availability of
experienced and cheap labor, and the abundant markets
served to spur its growth. 15
However, as a
source of power, the Manayunk canal was not as reliable
as the stockholders of the navigation company and the
manufacturers would have hoped.
“Steam
Versus Water—We notice that our manufacturers are
determined to be troubled no longer with the interruption
of low and high water. Heretofore in the spring season,
they were greatly annoyed with too much water, compelling
them to stop, and during the dry summer months, vice
versa, too little water to allow them to run... But now
we observe our enterprising friend, Mr. A. Campbell, is
about introducing a new engine of about 200 horsepower
and will hereafter do away with water
altogether. ” 16
The Schuylkill Navigation Company achieved its greatest
prosperity between the 1830s and 1840s, increasing its
tonnage every year. As the only method of transporting
coal from Port Carbon, the company thrived until it fell
victim to stiff competition brought on by the formation
of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company, and its
construction of a line to Pottstown in 1844. Forced to
reduce its tolls, the navigation company incurred debt
for the first time since its inception.
17
In 1850 a
tremendous flood required complete rebuilding of the
route, at a cost which brought on more debt than the
company could overcome. In spite of the improvements to
the canal, the attention to competitive prices, and
continuous increased tonnage, by the eve of the Civil
War, the Schuylkill Navigation Company was beginning to
lose the battle. After a significant drop in cargo during
the Civil War, a devastating drought, and another
catastrophic flood, the company could no longer compete
and leased the canal to the Philadelphia and Reading
Railroad, who in turn used it to increase its capacity
for the transport of coal. In 1889 the railroad
company built a spur, the Venice line, along the mule tow
path, further limiting the usefulness of the canal. The
last commercial boat made the trip in 1917, although the
route was available for pleasure boats up to the 1940s.
In 1945 the Schuylkill River Desilting Project, undid
much of the engineering that comprised the navigation of
the Schuylkill River. 18
After a period of decay brought on by the slow demise of
manufacturing in Manayunk, the canal was purchased by the
City of Philadelphia and improved as a recreation area.
Now a part of the Fairmount Park system, the waterway
serves another function, yet much of it remains to serve
as a monument to the industrialization of America.
1 Stuart Wells,
The
Schuylkill Navigation and the Girard Canal
, (University of
Pennsylvania, unpublished thesis), p. 11 cites
“Some Proposals for a Second Settlement in the
Province of Pennsylvania,” (England, 1690).
2 Edward P.
Richardson, "The
Athens of America 1800-1825" , Philadelphia, A Three
Hundred Year History, Weigley, ed. (New York, 1982), p.
239.
3 Brooke Hindle and
Steven Lubar, Engines
of Change: The American Industrial Revolution
1790-1860 (Washington D.C. 1986),
pp. 106-7; and Richardson, p. 237.
4 Hagner, p. 42.
According to Hagner, “White and Hazard were using
in their rolling mill bituminous coal. They knew of the
large body of anthracite coal at the head of the
Schuylkill, and early commenced making experiments with
it; they had some brought down by teams at an expense of
one dollar per bushel (twenty eight dollars per ton.)
They expended some three hundred dollars in experiments,
but could not exceed in making it burn. The hands in the
mill got heartily sick and tired of it, and it was about
being abandoned; but, on a certain occasion, after they
had been trying for a long time to make it burn without
success, they became exasperated, threw a large quantity
of the "black stones" as they called them, into the
furnace, shut the doors and left the mill; it so happened
that one of them had left his jacket in the mill, and in
going there for it some time after, he discovered a
tremendous fire in the furnace—the doors red with
heat. He immediately called all hands, and they ran
through the rolls three separate heats of iron with that
one fire.”
5 Hagner, p. 45.
6 Hagner, p. 51.
7 Main Street Manayunk
National Register Historic District nomination,
Richardson, p. 329; and Wells, p. 20.
8 Hindle and Lubar, p.
107.
9 Shelton, p. 55.
10 Hagner, p. 52. The term
“freshets” refers to the flooding typical to
springtime thawing or particularly heavy rains.
11 Wells, p. 20
12 Hagner, p. 60.
13 An inch, according to
Hagner was, the amount of water that “will pass
through an aperture one inch square under a head or
pressure of three feet measured from the surface of the
water to the centre of the aperture.” p. 57.
14 Hagner, pp. 57 &
79.
15 Shelton, p. 56.
16 Manayunk
Star and Roxborough Gazette , May 21, 1859, as quoted in
Scranton, p. 224.
17 Wells. p. 30.
18 Wells, p. 45.
Update May
2007 (by
Sara Jane Elk):
No change, except that the city added a bike path along
the canal.