Tinkers Creek Aqueduct: Canal Over a Creek
Near Cleveland, Ohio
Engineering the Ohio and Erie Canal through the Cuyahoga Valley meant solving a peculiar puzzle: how do you carry a canal over a creek that runs at a lower elevation? The answer was an aqueduct, a water-filled trough suspended on sandstone piers that let loaded canal boats sail right above Tinkers Creek. Workers finished the original structure in eighteen twenty-seven, earning about thirty cents a day plus a daily whiskey ration.
It had to be rebuilt twice, in eighteen forty-five and again in nineteen oh five, after floods repeatedly undermined the foundations. The canal itself was finished off by the great flood of nineteen thirteen, and the aqueduct fell into disrepair. The National Park Service removed the deteriorated structure in two thousand seven, and has since worked to restore the sandstone pier and abutments as part of Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
It is described as the last of the valley's original canal aqueducts to survive.
