| Authorization for the construction of a canal along the Susquehanna River
from Columbia, Pennsylvania, to the Maryland-Pennsylvania line was provided by
act of Pennsylvania legislature, April 15, 1835. Maryland had already chartered
a canal, under the incorporated name of the Tidewater Canal Company, to run from
the Pennsylvania line to Havre de Grace, Maryland. The two canals were united
under the name of the Susquehanna Canal Company or, more commonly, the
Susquehanna-Tidewater Canal Company.
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| Originally Middletown was to be the start of the canal, but in 1828, canal
officials changed the starting point to Columbia where the canal would
interchange with a railroad from Philadelphia. The Columbia canal closed in
1901. A canal basin at Columbia offered an outlet lock to the river and it was
here that workers shifted freight between boat and railroad cars and let boats
in and out of the lock. Passenger boats were designed in sections so for a trip
west workers would assemble the parts into one boat and launch it in the basin,
and east bound boats would be hauled on special railroad cars.
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| Susquehanna & Tidewater Canal opened Central Pennsylvania to Philadelphia and
Baltimore. The forty-five-mile canal, most active around 1870, ran to
Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, raising mule-drawn canal boats a total of 233 feet
through a system of 28 lift locks.
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