The 184-mile long Chesapeake and Ohio Canal has 11 stone aqueducts over creeks, which means massive flooded stone bridges carried horses and barge boats loaded with coal and grain *over* boaters in the creek or river below.
This is the Catoctin Aqueduct with horse poop where it should be flooded. Canal boats were pulled by mules and horses on the tow path where I am standing to take this picture.
Behind the aqueduct is the stone railroad bridge over the same creek. The canal and the railroad were in direct competition for both business and capital and for land along this very narrow stretch near Point of Rocks.
The Canal lock keeper’s house is one of perhaps a dozen along the canal. There are 74 locks to negotiate a rise/fall of 610 feet between Georgetown in Washington, DC, and Cumberland, Maryland.
Today the canal is mostly dry or marshy, but parts are flooded and the area serves as a long traversable wildlife corridor with the river, forest habitat, and adjacent farm lands yielding everything Mother Nature has to offer in this area.
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