Pennsylvania Canal, Western Division

The Pennsylvania Canal was a state-owned system built between eighteen twenty-six and eighteen thirty-four to link Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Erie before railroads made such waterways obsolete. The Western Division ran one hundred four miles from Johnstown to Pittsburgh and was the final leg of the main east-west line. At Leechburg, Dam Number One was constructed in eighteen twenty-seven to supply water to this stretch and create seven miles of slack-water navigation upstream to Apollo.

The canal moved goods and people through the Allegheny foothills at a time when overland travel was slow and brutal. It remained in operation here until the railroads took over its trade. By the Johnstown Flood of eighteen eighty-nine, the canal era was long over, and little remained of the infrastructure that had briefly knit Pennsylvania's interior together. What remains of that system today are fragments of towpath and memory in river towns like Leechburg.