Roanoke Navigation System

Roanoke Navigation System. . , The canal running just under the south end of the bridge is a remnant of a transportation network that once linked the basins of the Dan, Staunton and Roanoke Rivers. Patrick Henry helped pass the first authorization for such a system, but work began in earnest in 1815 when Virginia and North Carolina formed a single interstate incorporation. Danville’s ¾ mile segment, known locally as the Morotock Canal, was completed in 1823, consisted of a guard lock and four lift locks, all of wood, which enabled flat-bottomed boats called bateaux to navigate around Wynn’s Falls, shallow rapids where the Town of Danville had begun in 1793. At its peak in 1828, the Roanoke Navigation System linked Danville by water to Weldon NC, 120 miles southeast and Leaksville, NC 30 miles southwest. Success of the Richmond and Danville Railroad, and its successor, the Southern, led to the dissolution of the Roanoke Navigation system in the early 1880s. When the Riverside Cotton Mills was founded in 1882, the company purchased the waterway for its system of hydropower turbines which powered the Riverside Division during its early years. In the 1970s, Memorial Drive was extended to Main Street resulting in the destruction of half of the canal. The west end of the canal remains extant while the east end, now a subterranean canal no longer holding water, runs underneath Main Street and the Dan River Research Building, portions of which have been filled with earth. The middle section of the old canal, now extinct, lies under Memorial Drive. (Gary Grant, 1994)