Where the Canal Ran Out of Mountain

Cumberland was always the target. When Congress authorized the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in eighteen twenty-eight, the plan was to tunnel through the Alleghenies and reach Pittsburgh. Reality intervened.

By the time the canal's diggers arrived here in eighteen fifty, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad had already beaten them across the mountains. The dream of Pittsburgh died, but the canal ran between Georgetown and Cumberland for nearly a century, hauling coal and timber east. Today Canal Place marks that western terminus, mile zero of the C and O Canal National Historical Park, where a replica canal boat sits in the restored basin and stone mile markers recall the one hundred eighty-four and a half miles of locks and towpath stretching back to the Potomac tidewater.