Union Canal (Pennsylvania)

The Union Canal was a towpath canal that existed in southeastern Pennsylvania in the United States during the 19th century. First proposed in 1690 to connect Philadelphia with the Susquehanna River, it ran approximately 82 mi from Middletown on the Susquehanna below Harrisburg to Reading on the Schuylkill River.

History

18th century

Construction began in 1792 during George Washington's administration, but financial difficulties delayed its completion until 1828. Called the "Golden Link," it provided a critical early transportation route for shipping anthracite coal and lumber eastward to Philadelphia. Closed in the 1880s, remnants of the canal remain, most notably the Union Canal Tunnel, a hand-built engineering marvel that is the oldest existing transportation tunnel in the United States. The tunnel is a National Historic Landmark.

The idea of uniting the Schuylkill and Susquehanna rivers by a canal was first proposed and discussed by William Penn in 1690. Penn's plan, conceived a few years after he had founded Philadelphia was to make "a second settlement" on the Susquehanna river, similar in size to that of Philadelphia itself. He made this plan, titled "Some Proposals for a Second Settlement in the Province of Pennsylvania" public in England in 1690. The route envisioned by Penn was a road up the west bank of the Schuylkill to the mouth of French Creek near present-day Phoenixville heading west to the Susquehanna via present day Lancaster and a Susquehanna tributary, Conestoga Creek. as president, David Rittenhouse, William Smith and John Nicolson. In 1791, the Society presented proposals to the State of Pennsylvania proposing to connect the Atlantic seaboard with Lake Erie. but that effort with private financing was insufficient. In the Pennsylvania plan, the Society proposed a canal route, 426 miles to open a communication between the Schuylkill and Susquehanna rivers from Reading on the Schuylkill to Middletown on the Susquehanna with Robert Morris as the president of companies.

This proposed summit crossing offered a severe test of 18th-century engineering skills, materials and construction techniques. For both designing and operating a water-conveyance transportation system through an area where sinkholes are common, and surface water is scarce. Ultimately, the 1794 engineering concept was flawed as the water supply for the summit crossing was inadequate and the technology for minimizing supply losses was still another several decades into the future. By 1796, however, the navigation company's project was a commercial failure. The result was that with the onset of the Erie canal still some thirty years into the future, Philadelphia lost the early initiative in water transportation.

Despite the termination of construction in 1796, the company managed to forestall foreclosure on its property and constructed works.

19th century

thumb|North entrance of the 729-foot (222 m) Union Canal tunnel made through difficult geologic formations

thumb|Bond of the Union Canal Company of Pennsylvania from November 1, 1853

In 1802, the company had to fend off such an attempt and was only successful in holding onto its property and water rights through the sale of excess property, often whole farms were sold. in a series of letters in his Aurora and in his published letters, "To the People of Pennsylvania Respecting the Internal Improvement of the Commonwealth by Means of Roads and Canals."

With the establishment of constitutional government in 1789 following the American Revolutionary War, the financial condition of the country improved. While credit was more plentiful than it had been for a half-century and the population growing ..."came increasing and insistent demands for ... improved transportation facilities." Throughout the entire period it was authorized, the lotteries were to be found in nearly every issue of the city and county papers of Pennsylvania as well as throughout the United States. The State lottery to funds the canal construction is "... one of the best-known lotteries in the history of this country." The project was given a new push by industrialists in New Jersey and Philadelphia. Josiah White, an industrialist, discovered how to properly burn anthracite in 1808. Large deposits of anthracite were found within 100 miles of Philadelphia over a decade earlier, but overland transportation by mule train of bulk commodities was extremely costly. Local rivers were rapids strewn and ran fast, not shallow and well behaved. By the end of the War of 1812, industrialists were getting desperate for fuels—mills and manufacturies were sometimes forced into going quiet for days. White and others pushed for canal funding, applied for rights to improve navigations on the Schuylkill, and eventually split off when he disagreed with other investors as the best way to proceed.

Construction resumed in 1821, probably in response to the successful improvements along the Lehigh Canal designed by White and the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, which was founded in 1818 to regularly deliver growing amounts of anthracite coal from Summit Hill, Pennsylvania to the fuel starved coastal cities. One of the principal challenges was the construction of a tunnel through the ridge separating the headwaters of Quittapahilla Creek and Clarks Run. The drilling of the tunnel was by hand, using gunpowder to blast though argillaceous slate with veins of hard flinty limestone 80 feet (24 m) below the summit of the ridge. The progress of the tunnel was approximately 15 ft (4.5 m) per week, requiring over two years to complete. Another engineering difficulty was the lack of a sufficient continual supply of water at the summit level, a task that was compounded by leakage and required an elaborate pumping mechanism.

Although the initial design called for the construction of a canal from the Susquehanna to the Delaware, the 1825 opening of the rival Schuylkill Navigation from Reading to Philadelphia prompted the Union Canal Company to focus solely on the Middletown-Reading portion of the canal, which when connected would complete the longer conveyance west to the Susquehanna.

The canal was completed in 1828 under the direction of Canvass White, the preeminent canal engineer of the day. Upon its completion it was 8-1/2 ft (2.6 m) wide and had 93 locks. In 1832 a branch canal was constructed northward from the water works along the Swatara Creek to Pine Grove. The branch canal served as feeder for the summit level as well as allowing the transport of anthracite from the mountains, which became the principal revenue source for the canal operation.

The charter of the canal company allowed it to build lateral railroad lines from the canal to reach coal mines. It built a line from the end of the branch canal to Lorberry Junction in 1830, which was operated by horse power. This connected it to the Lorberry Creek Railroad and brought coal traffic to the canal. In 1844, the track was leased to the Swatara Railroad, which extensively refurbished the right-of-way and began to operate it by steam locomotive in about 1850.

By the 1840s, the narrow size of the canal locks prevented the passage of the larger barges that were adopted for use on the Pennsylvania Main Line and Schuylkill Navigation. The existing width restricted barges to . From 1841 to 1858, under the direction of chief engineer Loammi Baldwin Jr., the canal was widened to 17 ft (5.2 m) to allow the passage of the larger boats carrying to . In the process of the rebuilding, the tunnel through the summit ridge was shortened to 600 ft (180 m). The widening of the canal allowed for a brief period of prosperity in the late 1850s and early 1860s.

In June 1862, a flood on Swatara Creek damaged the western portion of the canal, completely destroying the Pine Grove feeder upon which the canal company depended for revenue. The flood prompted costly repairs that were compounded with continual water supply problems. The connecting railroad was leased to the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad on July 26, 1862, and sold outright in January 1866.

| designated_other1_name = Pennsylvania state historical marker

| designated_other1_abbr = PHMC

| designated_other1_date = March 01, 1948 and April 01, 1950

| designated_other1_link = List of Pennsylvania state historical markers

| designated_other1_color = navy

| designated_other1_textcolor = #ffc94b

In April 1950, the Union Canal Tunnel was purchased by the Lebanon County Historical Society. The tunnel was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 1, 1974. It was designated a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 1970. On April 19, 1994, the tunnel was designated a National Historic Landmark by the Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt. The tunnel is open to visitors in the Union Canal Tunnel Park.

A restored portion of the canal along Tulpehocken Creek is maintained by the Berks County Parks System at the Union Canal Towpath Park in Wyomissing west of Reading. This portion contains one previously restored lock (Lock 49E) https://www.co.berks.pa.us/Dept/Parks/Pages/Stop6Lock49E.aspx along a towpath now used as a recreational trail. A portion of the canal along Swatara Creek is also preserved at Swatara State Park where there are remains of 7 locks, a towpath bridge, major sections of the towpath, and three dams are still visible in Swatara State Park. The canal was never rebuilt because the railroad soon went into operation on the opposite bank of the Swatara Creek.

Points of interest

{| class="wikitable"

! Feature

! Coordinates

! Description

| Reading

| City at the eastern terminus

| Pine Grove

| Borough at the northern terminus of the feeder canal

| Lebanon

| City near the midpoint of the canal

| Middletown

| Borough at the western terminus

Notes

References

Sources

Augunst, Dean, Two canals of Lebanon County, Lebanon County Historical Society, .V.14, no.1 (1966)

Manuscript Collections

Union Canal Papers, 1791–1922. 8 boxes. Presented by George M. Lehman, 1943. Correspondence, 1820–1922;miscellaneous business records, 1822–1887;letter books, 1852–1891; annual reports 1791–1869, maps, charts, diagrams.
Historical Society of Berks County Deposit of Records of The Union Canal Company of Pennsylvania 1792-1885
Gordon Chambers Collection On Delaware Valley Navigation Companies, 1792–1823. Papers and correspondence of the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Navigation Company, and the Union Canal Company.

External links

Middletown Pa Dauphin County history: Union Canal History
Lebanon County Historical Society: Union Canal Tunnel
Lebanon, PA Union Canal Tunnel Park Photos
Swatara State Park
Pennsylvania Canal Society
American Canal Society
National Canal Museum