A young child leads two mules that are towing a boat on the C&O Canal.
Credit: National Park Service
Grades 3-4
Canals are narrow, manmade waterways that have been around for thousands of years. Some canals carry water to farms to water crops. In this video, we will learn about canals that were built to carry boats across long distances.
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (C&O Canal) runs next to the Potomac River, which makes up the southern border of Maryland. The river feeds water into the canal. Although the canal is not on flat land, a system of locks allows boats to travel up and downhill. A lock is a section of a canal with gates at both ends that keep the water contained. It is either filled with water or drained to bring a boat to the same water level as the next lock.
In this lesson, we will learn why the C&O Canal was built and how it helped with transportation throughout history.
Teacher's Guide and Related Standards
Students will be able to understand the geography of the Potomac River region, describe the purpose of the C&O Canal, and explain its role in the broader history of transportation in the United States.
How did settlers in the early United States use and shape the geography of the land for economic activities?
What’s on the Boat?
The C&O Canal starts in Georgetown, a neighborhood in Washington, D.C.
Imagine it is 1857. What goods and materials do you think were being shipped on the C&O Canal? What foods, building materials, types of fuel, and work materials? After brainstorming, zoom in on the first column of this chart to see a list of the most common goods on the canal.
» Chart of Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Toll Rates for Various Commodities by Unit of Measure
The C&O Canal began as a small tobacco trading post and grew into a busy port. With the canal, many different kinds of goods and raw materials were shipped through Georgetown.
Native Americans on the Potomac River
While surveying the Potomac River, George Washington interacted with the Native Americans who lived in that region. They might have been part of the Yougiogheny River Band of Shawnee Indians, the Piscataway Indian Nation, the Piscataway Conoy Tribe, or another group. By the time the C&O Canal was built, Native Americans in the area were impacted even more by European settlement and laws that removed them from the land.
Native Americans and European settlers would have eaten eels from the Potomac River.
View the eel trap made by a Patawomeck weaver.
» Eel trap/pot | National Museum of the American Indian
How else do you think the river provided for early inhabitants?
Canal Families
For canal boatmen and lockkeepers, life on the canal was a family business. Lockkeepers lived with their families along the canal, and their wives and children would sometimes open and close the locks for boats to pass. Women of the family would prepare food to sell to boatmen as they passed.
Life for children was very different from how we know it today. Read these interviews with the children of boatmen on the C&O Canal to learn what their lives were like.
This learning resource is a production of Maryland Public Television/Thinkport.