Bald Eagle and Spring Creek Navigation Canal Lock 11

Bald Eagle and Spring Creek Navigation Canal Lock 11. 1839 - 1865. , IN APRIL 1834, ROLAND CURTIN joined a dozen other Centre County businessmen-including fellow ironmasters James Irvin, Joseph Miles, William Thomas, and Bond Valentine-in organizing the Bald Eagle and Spring Creek Navigation Company (BE&SCN). The firm was authorized by the Pennsylvania Legislature to create a navigable water route of canals and slackwater pools (impounded bodies of still water) extending from the Centre County seat at Bellefonte 25 miles northeastward to a connection with the West Branch Pennsylvania Canal near the new logging town of Lock Haven, Clinton County. The firm's name reflected its plan to place this "Navigation" in and alongside the Bald Eagle Creek and its Spring Creek tributary. The Navigation's connection to the West Branch Pennsylvania Canal would be made by the four-mile-long Bald Eagle Cross-Cut Canal being built by the State westward from Lock Haven-the latest extension of the Commonwealth's Main Line of Public Works., A plan of the BE&SCN drawn up by engineer Mathew Stealey in 1835 (right) called for 22 "lift locks" to raise and lower boats an average of 8 feet per lock in order to overcome an elevation change of 187 feet between Bellefonte and a new State-built dam at the western end of the Bald Eagle Cross-Cut Canal. Stealey's plan also called for placing six no-lift "guard locks" at stream crossings and feeder entrances to canals, to protect the canals from damage during high water, and to provide a means of supplying them with creek-water as necessary. All locks were to match those being built on the West Branch Pennsylvania Canal: 90 feet long, 17 feet wide in the chamber, composed of cut stone lined with wood planks to shield the lock walls as well as vessels using the locks. Canals were to be four feet deep, 20 feet wide at the bottom, 36 feet across at the top, with banks rising six feet above the water level. Towpaths built atop the banks for use by boat-pulling horses and mules were to be nine feet wide., Contracts for constructing the BE&SCN were awarded in the fall of 1835. The 25-mile route was divided into halves for construction purposes: a Lower Division, extending from the Cross-Cut Canal north of Flemington upstream and along Bald Eagle Creek to the Howard Furnace (five miles northeast of Eagle Iron Works); and an Upper Division, extending from Howard to Bellefonte, the final two miles paralleling Spring Creek. The Lower Division was completed in 1837, the same year a financial "panic" plunged the nation into a decade-long economic depression. Work on the Upper Division continued in fits and starts, as funding permitted. To Roland Curtin's satisfaction, the 6.5-mile stretch between Howard Furnace and Eagle Iron Works-entailing construction of seven lift locks and two guard locks-was completed by the fall of 1839. The opening of that section was a boon for Roland's enterprise, greatly facilitating transportation of materials, products, and people in and out of Eagle Iron plantation., The remaining six miles of the BE&SCN, extending to Bellefonte, were not completed until 1848., The first canal boat to travel the length of the BE&SCN-the George Crane-arrived in Bellefonte on September 1, 1848, carrying jubilant BE&SCN managers and other dignitaries. By some accounts, the boat had paused the previous day at Eagle Iron Works to deliver a piano manufactured in Philadelphia and destined to grace a parlor in the Curtin Mansion. A second boat arrived in Bellefonte the following day. It was either a "work boat” or a "packet boat” (designed for transporting passengers, mail, and merchandise) "from Eagle Works,” named Jane Curtin in honor of Roland Curtin's wife., Materials and products floated over the BE&SCN during its first years of operation included pig iron, bar iron (wrought iron), charcoal, bituminous coal, coke, plaster, salt, flour, whiskey, rye, corn, oats, wood, fire-brick, iron ore, lime, and all manner of merchandise. People could book passage on canal boats; if a packet boat was not available-and few such vessels plied the BE&SCN-travelers could ride in the captain's quarters of a standard boat, or make themselves comfortable on the cargo-laden deck., Severe flooding in the spring of 1865 extensively damaged BE&SCN's locks, dams, and canal banks. Facing stiff competition from the Bald Eagle Valley Railroad-opened the previous December between Lock Haven and Tyrone, Blair County-BE&SCN managers could not justify the great expense of restoring the Navigation. The battered system was abandoned, except for a few miles of its eastern end., Eagle Iron Works officials eventually installed a turbine (a bladed wheel turned by water movement) in the depths of vacated Lock 11. Shielded from weather, and nearly impervious to drought, the submerged turbine replaced the antique water wheel system of blast generation, proving much more reliable in powering bellows in the blast house and bloomeries in the forge during the Works' final decades in operation., BE&SCN Lock 11, whose remains now rest beside the Eagle Iron Works blast house, was designed for raising and lowering boats 7¾ feet. Attached to either end of its chamber was a pair of hinged wooden gates fitted with wicket valves and sturdy arms. By opening and closing the gates and valves, a lock operator could allow water from the higher, upstream canal level to gradually fill the chamber (lifting a boat), or water within the filled chamber to slowly drain into the downstream canal level (lowering a boat). Boatmen were responsible for "tending" the locks through which their vessels passed; in a cost-saving measure, the BE&SCN Company declined to hire and house locktenders., [Illustration captions, clockwise from the top center map, read] , . On a map of the planned Bald Eagle and Spring Creek Navigation, drafted by engineer Mathew R. Stealey in 1835, the proposed chain of canals and slackwater pools-extending 25 miles from Bellefonte northeastward to the western end of the Bald Eagle Cross-Cut Canal near Flemington-is marked in red. The four-mile-long Cross-Cut Canal, connecting to the West Branch Pennsylvania Canal in Lock Haven, is highlighted in pink., . ABOVE: Passengers enjoy fresh air and views of the countryside aboard a packet boat. From a mid-1800s painting by Edward Lamson Henry., . BELOW: A pair of mules tows a canal boat on an unidentified Pennsylvania canal at the turn of the twentieth century (colorized)., . LEFT: A lock on the West Branch Pennsylvania Canal near Watsontown, Northumberland County., . RIGHT: Costumed interpreters negotiate a lock on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park in Maryland., . RIGHT: The route of the Bald Eagle and Spring Creek Navigation through Eagle Iron Works is drawn in red on a detail of Stealey's 1835 map. Lock locations are highlighted in yellow. Major components of the Works are labeled., . RIGHT: A diorama on display at the Thomas T. Taber Museum in Williamsport, Pa., shows a canal boat rising with the water level in a lift lock similar to Lock 11. No photos or contemporary depictions of canal operations in or around Eagle Iron Works have been discovered.