The local Schuylkill Canal was hand-dug in 1820, and is a remnant of the Schuylkill River’s so-called "navigation." The early 1800s saw the construction of many of the eastern seaboard’s famous canals, which for many years served the function of today’s railroads and paved roads. In 1815 some Philadelphia businessmen created a stock company, The Schuylkill Navigation Company, whose mission was to raise enough capital to make the shallow, 108-mile-long Schuylkill navigable so that boats could bring anthracite coal from the coalfields at the head of the river, down past five county shorelines, to the port of Philadelphia. This slow-burning coal was much sought after by a new nation in its industrial infancy.

But making the Schuylkill navigable was an engineering project that would cost a fortune for the period and require heroic human labor. The river included falls and flowed through steep gorges. The navigation company, using immigrant crews of Irishmen, constructed a chain of 32 dams, each with a deep dam pool two or three miles in length behind it. Every dam and falls dropped the river to a lower level, and

twenty-three canals and many locks were needed to provide passage for boats around the abrupt changes in water levels. Locks were needed to raise or lower boats gently to the next level.

      THE BUILDING OF SCHUYLKILL CANAL BOATS IN CENTRAL, PA

The navigation was completed in 1825, the same year the Erie Canal was completed, and it was an immediate success. For the following decades, mules pulled boats loaded with coal along towpaths that were a part of every canalside town and village. The demand for the coal was so great that the company soon began building larger boats. It rebuilt the early canal locks to double and widen them. Investors in the Schuylkill Navigation Company reaped dividends. In its peak year of 1859, the company transported nearly two million tons of coal

But the first railroads had come by then, and as more and more tracks were laid the fortunes of the Schuylkill Navigation Company declined. The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company extended its tracks north of Reading, toward the coalfields. Then the Pennsylvania line flanked the river on the opposite side. Both provided freight service unaffected by water level or freezing weather. For a time the Reading leased the navigation properties and used the upriver facilities, but in 1902 it reneged on its lease and returned all operations to the financially distressed navigation company. The last commercial boatload of coal went down the navigation sometime around 1925. In 1949 the bankrupt company deeded its properties to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

The properties did not fare well in the state’s care. For over a hundred years coal had been washed before being loaded onto boats at the mine heads. Silt had accumulated in the river clear to Philadelphia. The state put the navigation lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation, which devoted its resources to dredging coal silt along the length of the river. It used old, unused canal beds as "impoundment basins" in which to dump the fine black silt. It buried or dismantled many locks and dams, and let others fall into ruin.

In December of 1995, however, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge officially declared the Schuylkill River a state "heritage corridor." This was a long-delayed recognition by the state that the river could have economic value as a tourist attraction. Every year since 1996 the state’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources has offered grants for projects that would help bring a large public "back to the river." Two of these projects have been old Schuylkill Navigation sites: a canal along the waterfront of Manayunk, and the canal in Montgomery County. These sites have the last two watered canals left of the navigation’s original 23. Manayunk is part of the City of Philadelphia. Its one-mile canal is lined with empty mill buildings that 150 years ago used the river for power. The longer canal in Upper Providence Township is still largely rural. The residences of two villages, Mont Clare and Port Providence, overlook it on its land side. The tree-lined towpath is on its undeveloped river side. This website is about this canal and the story of its restoration since ’96 thanks to the efforts of the volunteer Schuylkill Canal Association.

Learn more about how Lock 60 worked in 1830.
Learn more about how boats use the lock.