Pennsylvania Canal: Eastern Division

The Eastern Division of the Pennsylvania Canal was built between eighteen twenty-six and eighteen thirty-three, and it operated here at Clark's Ferry until nineteen oh one, nearly seventy years of service. This stretch crossed the Susquehanna River at a critical junction where the Wiconisco Canal, carrying coal from the Lykens Valley fields, joined the main system from the east bank. The state-built canal network moved iron, coal, and lumber between the interior and the port at Philadelphia at a scale that was impossible by wagon road.

Before the railroads arrived and made canals obsolete, this system was Pennsylvania's economic backbone. At its peak the Eastern Division carried traffic as significant as any interstate highway. The old towpath bridge at Clark's Ferry was one of the busiest crossings in the state, a quiet crossing now but once the center of a continental commerce.