Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal

The North Carolina Cut running five miles through Currituck County was carved out between eighteen fifty-five and eighteen fifty-nine by steam-powered hydraulic dredges, a technology new to canal building in the region. The Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal Company opened the full seventy-five-mile waterway for business on January ninth, eighteen fifty-nine, linking the Chesapeake Bay with Albemarle Sound and allowing cargo to bypass the treacherous waters of Cape Hatteras. It was one of the first canals in the region cut with newly invented steam-powered dredges.

The federal government took over operation in nineteen thirteen, and the canal was absorbed into the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, the protected coastal route that stretches from New England to Florida. Vessels passing through here today are following a path that engineers first cut through this wetland more than one hundred sixty years ago.