Ohio-Erie Canal and Walhonding Canal

Ohio-Erie Canal and Walhonding Canal. . , The lock your at is for the Wallooding Canal a 25 mile feeder canal off the Ohio-Erie that runs from Cleveland to Portsmouth 305 miles., The captain and his wife lived on their boat she being the cook there was a "Hoagie" maintained the mules, and children of the captain running a privately owned boat. They hauled extra mules along the way. A state boat had stables along the path there for could haul more tonnage., This is the only Triple-Lock on the entire system. This was used from 1840 to 1913. During the flood of 1913 the entire canal system was damaged beyond repair as the cost was too much repair. (This section of Walhonding Canal you see here was used after the canal system was finished to feed water to a Hydro-Electric plant here at Roscoe up to the 1950s., The photo of the mill here is Lee's Empire Mill which sat where the lower Parking lot sits now. The stone wall was the foundation to that mill. The photo with the railroad bridge is looking east. The photo of the mill with the box car is looking west., The speed limit on the canal was four-miles an hour canal boats if made a wake would damage the sides of the tow-path. The floods and railroad were the demise of the canal system. Canal boats could only travel during non-freezing months. The speed limit and tonnage was limited for canal boats., The railroad could run 55 mph, 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The very first locomotive came to Coshocton County disassembled on a canal boat. It was a narrow gauge (distance between rails) locomotive called the "Mohammed" Later a standard gauge train system was in place ending the canal era. Mohammed was shipped to Texas., The canal was hand-built by wheel barrow and shovel sometimes drag lines with a pan pulled by horses.