Hitch up your RV and bikes to roll along the Grand Old Ditch from northwestern Maryland to Washington, D.C.
Story and Photography by Ron and Eva Stob
F or years we’ve been traveling America’s canals by boat. What would it be like, we wondered, to travel along the historic Chesapeake and Ohio Canal by truck and trailer and experience this heritage waterway intimately by bicycle? For those unfamiliar with the C&O Canal, the waterway was a dream of George Washington’s, who envisioned connect- ing the eastern states with the western frontier. Upon comple- tion, the 6-foot-deep, 12-foot-wide canal and adjacent towpath stretched from Georgetown in Washington, D.C., to Cumber- land, Maryland. Seven dams on the Potomac River “watered” the canal through diversion channels. The ultimate goal was to connect to the Ohio River in Pitts- burgh via the Youghiogheny and Monongahela Rivers, but that section was never completed. The B&O Railroad began its north- west thrust at the same time. In 1850 the passage of 185 miles through 75 locks pulled by mule teams took five days going day
and night to reach Cumberland; by rail, it took five hours. Even before the C&O Canal reached Cumberland, it ex- perienced a slow and inevitable decline and eventually went bankrupt. To prevent competition, the railroad then bought all rights to the waterway. In 1938 when the railroad also fell on hard times, the federal government exchanged the railroad’s tax debt for the canal. The government then owned something it didn’t really need or want: 5,288 acres of a useless canal along the unnavigable Potomac. Nicknamed the Grand Old Ditch, the canal sat abandoned for 30 years, gradually filling in. Various proposals were floated, including a highway, but in 1954 U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas envisioned a hiker’s parkway using the old towpath. To promote his idea, Douglas walked from Cumber- land to Georgetown, accompanied by a cadre of friends and a reporter from the Washington Post .
12 COAST TO COAST fall 2013
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