Alexandria Canal Tide Lock

About this property

The Alexandria Canal was a canal in the United States that connected the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal at Georgetown in the District of Columbia to the Potomac River at the city of Alexandria both when it was a part of the District of Columbia and when it was part of Virginia. It was often treated as an extension of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and called by that name. It was also sometimes called the Washington and Alexandria Canal. The idea of connecting Alexandria, VA to the Ohio River predated the American Revolution. The first real effort to do that started in 1785 when George Washington formed the Potomac Company to improve the movement of boats on the Potomac River. This company created some small canals to improve the navigability of the Potomac River, but it was not an easy journey. Talk of a canal between Alexandria and Georgetown started in 1805 after the construction of the causeway to Mason's Island obstructed the safest passage for boats, making water trips between the two cities hazardous when the weather was anything other than favorable; and thus harming business interests in Alexandria. In 1812, Congress passed a law authorizing construction of a canal between the two if work began within two years; but plans were scuttled by the War of 1812. In 1825, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company (C&O Canal) was established to connect Washington, DC to the Ohio River. Its first section opened in 1830. In 1830 merchants from Alexandria (which at the time was within the jurisdiction of the federal District of Columbia) proposed linking their city to Georgetown to capitalize on the new canal. Unlike Georgetown, Alexandria had a deep water port and merchants there saw an opportunity. Congress granted a charter to the Alexandria Canal Company on May 26, 1830 to build a canal as a spur to the C&O Canal. A groundbreaking featuring George Washington Parke Custis was held in Alexandria on July 3, 1831 and construction began the next day. The C&O Canal built the Georgetown abutment and the Alexandria Canal Company built the rest. Work relied heavily upon the forced labor of enslaved people. In 1835, the canal built a causeway across Four Mile Run and a viaduct to carry the turnpike over the stream and under the canal. Despite delays caused by the Panic of 1837, the aqueduct opened on July 4, 1843 and the canal opened, as far as the turning basin at Washington and Montgomery Streets on December 2, 1843. The locks down to the river weren't completed until 1845. The Aqueduct Bridge (begun in 1833 and completed in 1843) enabled canal boats from the C&O Canal to cross the Potomac River without descending to the river level. The boats would then continue their trips downstream on a canal on the southwest side of the Potomac until they reached Alexandria's seaport.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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