Schuylkill Canal

At the time, the Schuylkill River was the least expensive and most efficient method of transporting bulk cargo, and cities on the U.S. East Coast were experiencing an energy crisis. It fostered the mining of anthracite coal as the major source of industry between Pottsville and eastern markets. Along the tow-paths, mules pulled barges of coal from Port Carbon through the water gaps to Pottsville; locally to the port and markets of Philadelphia; and some then by ship or through additional New Jersey waterways, to New York City markets.

The Schuylkill Canal was in operation until 1931 and was almost completely filled in the 1950s. Some remaining watered reaches are now used for recreation.

History

The Schuylkill Navigation Company was incorporated in 1815. An application for a charter to improve the Lehigh also was filed that year. These represented the growing impetus in the United States to develop a water transportation network similar to that emerging in Great Britain.

The lower Lehigh Canal project made its first test shipments of coal in 1819, proving the Lehigh's locks concept. Its delivery in 1820 of over 365 tons of Anthracite to Philadelphia resulted in a temporary market glut. These and regularly increasing tonnages shipped down to Philadelphia's docks over the next 2–3 years attracted investors and speculators from all along the Eastern Seaboard to capitalize and fund similar companies. This began a deluge of private canal and canal resumption projects in the 1820s. The Delaware and Hudson Canal companies, the Delaware and Raritan Canal, the Morris Canal, the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal and various others followed, triggering the North American Canal Age and helping fuel the Industrial Revolution in America.

Founding

... while there was a total lack of highways or navigable streams leading to the region. Small quantities of coal were mined, but people were slow to appreciate its value, and it required vigorous exertions to induce them to attempt to use it. Its very appearance was against it, and the majority of persons approached were entirely incredulous as to its being anything else than a stone, incapable of being burned by any inherent qualities it possessed. Not only the coal but the fact that it was coal had to be discovered. Even as late as the year 1812, when it was sought to secure an act authorizing the improvement of the Schuylkill river in order to convey coal to Philadelphia, the representative of Schuylkill County in the state senate declared there was no coal in his district; that there was a kind of black stone that was called coal, but that it would not burn!

— Fred Brenckman, History of Carbon County

As related in The Delaware and Lehigh Canals history, two of the principle investors in the Schuylkill Navigation Company were partner industrialists and mill owners White and Hazard, who were anxious to secure a reliable source of fuel for their mills. Early on in the board meetings of the new corporation they'd quarreled with others over the funding, timings, and tasks necessary and when they could not prevail to speed the project, immediately explored the option of making a navigation on the Lehigh River and acquiring the mining rights of the failing Lehigh Coal Mine Company and other investors to fund the projects. The Lehigh and Schuylkill canals had similar problems, both had to make navigable a series of rapids with rivers providing less water than was optimal—and ironically, by the 1820s, both eventually shipped coal from the opposite ends of the Little Schuylkill River's tributary, and the coal deposits once owned by Lehigh Coal Mine Company (the LCMC), in the Panther Creek Valley.

Two years after this [1823] the Schuylkill region [coal mining] was opened, while it was not until 1829 that the coal trade of the Wyoming region [i.e., the Wyoming Valley] began.

— Fred Brenckman, History of Carbon County

When the engineering challenges and finances allowed, the Schuylkill Canal began operations in 1825. The initial configuration completed in 1827, was waterway of 108 miles (174 km) was linking Philadelphia to Port Carbon in the Southern Anthracite Coal Fields near Pottsville. Combining 62 miles (100 km) of separate canals, often referred to as "reaches", with 46 miles (74 km) of slack water pools (so called "levels"), the Schuylkill Navigation used 92 lift locks to overcome the difference of 588 feet (179 m) in elevation between its terminal points. This was similar in degree to the gradients of the Lehigh Canal but twice the height drop in twice the distance, both much steeper than the Erie Canals leisurely descents. In point of fact, canals in the United States rarely kept their original configurations and improvements continued over their life; if for no other reason, periodically ice damage and freshets occur pointing out shortcomings, leading to improvements.

By the early 1820s, the coal coming down the Lehigh and Schuylkill canals having alleviated the high costs of heating, overcoming in just a few years the long suffered shortages of fuels in Eastern cities and towns The Auburn Tunnel, a 450-foot (137 m) bore through a hill near Auburn, was completed in 1821, but by 1857, due to increased traffic, canal capacity (widening) modifications turned it into an open-cut. Like the later Delaware Canal was to the Lehigh, the Union Canal, built between 1821 and 1828, was purpose designed to connect the Susquehanna River with the Schuylkill Canal at Reading. When completed, the two canals combined to make a water link between Philadelphia and the slack water level of the Susquehanna River at Middletown. This route along the Schuylkill Valley was envisioned primarily as a coal road, whilst the Union Canal was engineered for cross-state passenger and cargoes; but it also competed with and then became secondary to the east–west divisions of the Pennsylvania Canal System on the Main Line of Public Works between Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Pittsburgh. The Schuylkill Canal also featured the first transportation tunnel in America.

By transporting bulk cargoes and provide water power, the Schuylkill Navigation transformed the towns of Reading, Norristown, and Pottsville into early manufacturing centers. By using the Delaware River and the Delaware and Raritan and Morris Canals, manufactured products and anthracite from the Schuylkill Valley could also reach New York Harbor. The Schuylkill Navigation system quickly assumed a monopoly position in the transportation of anthracite coal from the coal mines of Schuylkill County to Philadelphia, and by 1841, was annually transporting over 737,517 tons of cargo.

Competition with the railroad

In 1841, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad opened, and within four years, was hauling three times as much anthracite to Philadelphia each year as the Schuylkill Navigation. In response, the Schuylkill Navigation Company enlarged its canals; by 1847, they could accommodate the passage of boats carrying 230 tons of coal. These barges were better than twice the size that could be used on the rival Lehigh and Delaware Canals with the latter's limited lock lengths; an artifact of having a state run a practical construction project without businessmen’s balancing viewpoints. In 1850, a price-fixing arrangement with the railroad stabilized prices for the transportation of anthracite. This decade was the Schuylkill Navigation's most prosperous period; in 1859, its peak year, it transported 1,700,000 tons of cargo. However, in that same year the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad carried over 2,500,000 tons, an amount comparable to the Lehigh Canal's 1855 peak of 2,300,000 tons of coal.

During the 1860s the railroads had become the king of transportation with their improved power and speed of travel, so like most North American canals, the Schuylkill Canal began to decline in use for general freight and the wealthier westward bound passengers had long since used the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad to reach the Pennsylvania Canal System to cross the Alleghenies. In 1857, the Pennsylvania Railroad had connected Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, would eventually add New York City and Chicago, and was instrumental in the declining fortunes of Pennsylvania's far flung network of canals. Railroads could reach mine heads and coal breakers where no stream existed to support the costly digging of a new ditch. Coal shifted away from canals to the more flexible means of bulk goods transportation. Where the established canals supplied, their markets mostly remained relatively stable and they generally remained competitive with only a gradual erosion of market share as decades passed. Eventually, oil heat and their perennial problems of delivering in winter's cold diminished their role. The self-examination during the early years of the Great Depression would end up closing most, as it did the Schuylkill Navigation Company.

Decline

In 1869 the Schuylkill Navigation was damaged by a flood, hindering operations for some time whilst repairs could be made. In 1870, its board of directors forced by stockholders, the Schuylkill Navigation Company leased its waterway to the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad for 999 years, surrendering to the competition. Under the railroad's control, the Schuylkill Navigation continued to decline as a general freight carrier, but operated primarily as a coal road, like the Lehigh and Delaware Canals into the 1930s, since for heating and especially, steam power, nearly everyone needed anthracite. The traffic on the canal was expedited by corporate maneuvers when its New York City and New Jersey markets connecting Delaware and Raritan Canal was acquired in 1872 by the competing Pennsylvania Railroad—in a blatant act supporting a bid for monopoly, soon Schuylkill boats were denied access to this important New Jersey waterway. As a result, traffic on the Schuylkill decreased rapidly. Adding insult to injury, the PRR itself invaded the Schuylkill's territory with the construction of its Schuylkill Branch in the mid-1880s.

By 1890 only 144,994 tons of cargo passed through the Schuylkill Navigation. The Schuylkill Navigation was also hindered by coal silt deposits that made its upper sections almost unusable. By 1891 the portion of Navigation above Port Clinton was abandoned. By 1904 the anthracite traffic had almost completely ceased, and after 1913 only an occasional cargo passed between Port Clinton and Philadelphia. Excursion vessels and pleasure boating remained active on the Schuylkill Navigation until most of the canals were filled by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania during 1947–1979 in efforts to remove coal silt from the Schuylkill River.