Lift Lock Number Five: The Canal That Moved Pennsylvania

Here stood Lift Lock Number Five of the Pennsylvania Canal's Susquehanna Division, one of the engineering stairsteps that moved thousands of canal boats through this valley every year. The Pennsylvania Canal was the commonwealth's answer to New York's Erie Canal, a system of man-made waterways and inclined planes stretching across the state to connect Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. The Susquehanna Division gathered cargo from the North and West Branches of the Susquehanna River and funneled it south and east toward the markets of Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore.

Boats loaded with lumber, coal, iron, and grain rose and fell through these locks one chamber at a time, each lift raising or lowering the vessel a matter of feet. Traffic flowed through here until around the turn of the twentieth century, when the railroads had made the canal obsolete. What was once a major commercial artery in Pennsylvania became a quiet remnant, its towpaths grown over, its locks slowly returning to the earth.