Patowmack Canal

Patowmack Canal

       A wiki link on the subject can be found at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patowmack_Canal

            A wiki link on the Potomac River can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potomac_River

            One of the kayakers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Gordon )  who actually ran The Great Falls of the Potomac (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Falls_(Potomac_River))  later died on an ill fated river trip in Tibet in 1998 (Tsangpo Gorge - much deeper than the Grand Canyon in the USA  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarlung_Tsangpo_Grand_Canyon )).

            The Patowmack Canal has some impressive rock blasting done by the now old fashioned method of using black powder, as I recall. Said another way, building canals made sense to some of our ancestors, and the Patowmack Canal was one of these canals with a towpath.

            Later, and in general, railroads beat out the canals with towpaths as the best way to go west and promote commerce and travel. After all, we had a transcontinental railroad built, but never a transcontinental canal built. Of course we also had a lot of steamboats (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat) also built and used.