History of Butler County Canals
Compiled by Jim Blount
About 25 miles of the 249-mile Miami & Erie Canal passed through Butler County. There also were two lateral canals connecting to the main waterway within the county -- the Hamilton Basin and the Warren County Canal. Canal construction started at Middletown in 1825 and the system was formally closed in ceremonies in Middletown in 1929.
Three hydraulic canals -- providing water power, not transportation -- operated in Butler County. They fueled industries in Hamilton, Rossville (the west side of Hamilton) and Middletown.
The Miami Canal -- authorized by the Ohio General Assembly Feb. 4, 1825 -- started with a groundbreaking July 21, 1825, on Daniel Doty's farm, then south of Middletown. There is a marker at the site at the northeast corner of Verity Parkway (Ohio 4) and Yankee Road in Middletown. Many of the canal workers were Irish immigrants and a Middletown neighborhood east of the canal became known as Little Dublin during the construction period.
The first leg of the Miami Canal (later known as the Miami-Erie and Miami & Erie) was built south from Middletown because of the ease of construction.
July 1, 1827, the first water flowed into the canal from Abner Enoch's mill race north of Middletown. By August 1827, trips between Hamilton and Middletown were possible. The first boats from Cincinnati reached Middletown Nov. 28, 1827. The first run between Cincinnati and Dayton was completed in January 1829.
By 1845, the canal connected Cincinnati on the Ohio River and Toledo on Lake Erie. The legislature had approved the Miami Extension Canal Dec. 1, 1831. Construction started on the first segment in April 1833.
The 249-mile canal linked Cincinnati on the Ohio River and Toledo on Lake Erie. Ohio legislators changed its name to The Miami & Erie Canal March 14, 1849. The state-owned system prospered until railroads siphoned off business in the 1850s. In 1851, its peak year, about 400 boats were running on the Miami & Erie Canal.
The canal's route of about 25 miles through Butler County touched, from north to south, Middletown, Amanda, Excello, LeSourdsville, Hamilton, Port Union, Rialto and Crescentville. According to an 1859 report, there were 10 locks and four aqueducts (Amanda, LeSourdsville, Crawford's Run in Hamilton and Crescentville) in Butler County.
The last of periodic attempts to save the canal through Butler County started in 1901 when the state authorized the use of "electric mules" for power on the waterway between Cincinnati and Dayton.
Until 1902, canal boats in this area were pulled exclusively by mules and horses walking along 10-foot towpaths. In 1901, the privately-owned Miami & Erie Canal Transportation Company (M&ECTC) began installing the "electric mule" system. Electric-powered locomotives or engines, each weighing about 30 tons, would replace four-legged power.
The improvement required laying tracks along the towpath and erecting utility poles and trolley lines overhead to transmit the electricity purchased from Cincinnati Edison Co. Also, lighting was installed to encourage night passenger and freight service.
In February 1901, to support the private effort, the state began repairing embankments and dredging the right-of-way to a depth of five feet between Dayton and Cincinnati. But the ambitious plan ran into several obstacles and legal hurdles. In March 1902 the City of Middletown filed an injunction against the company because it had failed to apply to the city for permission to construct track, poles and wire.
Railroads and electric-powered interurban companies opposed the scheme, believing the M&ECTC would eventually abandon the waterway and use the towpath tracks to establish rival rail service. South of Middletown, for example, the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad never allowed the M&ECTC to cross its tracks. The CH&D created a physical obstacle by stationing a locomotive, caboose and crew at the proposed crossing point.
In April 1902, the company announced its first electric mule had completed a trip between Hamilton and Port Union. An engine pulled six boats loaded with materials for men working on the line. (Since the canal had been built in the 1820s, the segment between Hamilton and Port Union had been known as the "Five Mile Level" because there were no locks in that stretch.)
The attempt at reviving the canal ended May 3, 1905, when the electric mule project was abandoned with debts exceeding $2 million. Nov. 20, 1912, a Hamilton newspaper said "a large number of workmen have been busy during the past few days tearing up the tracks of the old electric mule along the Miami & Erie Canal."
The final blow for the Ohio canal system -- which had been in decline since the growth of railroads in the 1850s -- came in the form of the March 1913 flood.
The ceremonial closing was Nov. 2, 1929, at the site of the 1825 groundbreaking in Middletown. The legal end came in May 1931 when Gov. George White signed a bill presenting the canal land to the state for development of a super highway. In the 1930s, Erie Highway in Hamilton and Verity Parkway in Middletown were built over the former canal bed. Patterson Boulevard in Dayton and Central Parkway in Cincinnati also were constructed over the former canal right-of-way.
Hamilton Basin
The Hamilton Basin was the city's connection to the Miami & Erie Canal. When canal construction started in Middletown July 21, 1825, its proposed route was about a mile east of Hamilton.
Faced with the prospect of their town losing the advantages of being a commercial and transportation center, Hamilton leaders appealed to Ohio officials to change the route. At the same time, a new town was planned on the canal at the present intersection of Erie Highway (Ohio 4) and High Street.
In December 1827, Robert B. Millikin, Dr. Daniel Millikin, John Reily, Thomas Blair and Jesse Corwin -- representing Hamilton and Rossville -- persuaded state leaders to authorize a sidecut canal into Hamilton. This became the Hamilton Basin, financed mostly by local donations. The state provided $2,000 while Hamilton sources paid $6,232.
Construction started in the spring of 1828 and the basin opened March 10, 1829. The original Hamilton Basin started from a lock on present Erie Highway, between High Street and Maple Avenue, and ran west to about South Third Street. The basin was 148 feet wide at the water line to permit the turning of canal boats. Eventually it was lined with wharves serving shops and warehouses.
In 1825, when work started on the Miami Canal, a stagecoach made one round trip a week between Cincinnati and Dayton, through Hamilton, carrying no more than 12 passengers. Each segment of the trip -- between Hamilton and Cincinnati and between Hamilton and Dayton -- was 14 hours, if the stage schedule was maintained.
On the canal, 60-passenger boats became common and travel was reduced to seven hours to Cincinnati and eight hours to Dayton -- about half the time it had taken by stagecoach.
As railroads were built in the 1850s and 1860s, the canal and the basin declined. By the early 1870s, the basin was considered a health hazard and nuisance. In May 1875 Hamilton voters favored closing it, but the state and city couldn't agree on who would pay for the work.
The evening of June 19, 1877, about 100 men "appeared on the neck of the basin with wheelbarrows, picks, shovels, etc.," noted a newspaper, "and proceeded to fill up the basin."
In 1888, the tracks of a new railroad (Cincinnati & Richmond, also known as the Pan Handle, later the Pennsylvania, and now Norfolk Southern) were placed over the former basin.
Another branch canal partially in Butler County was the Warren County Canal. It was designed to connect the Miami & Erie at Middletown in Butler County with Lebanon, the county seat of Warren County. A private firm, the Warren County Canal Company, formed Feb. 22, 1930, to build the lateral canal, described variously as 18 and 20 miles in length. It was estimated to cost $123,000, but totaled $217,000 on completion.
The state assumed control of the faulty project Feb. 20, 1836, "paying the company 50 cents on the dollar on what had been expended." According to a Warren County history, "the canal was made navigable for boats about the year 1840." Most of the time after state ownership, the Warren County Canal served as a feeder canal for the Miami & Erie Canal at Middletown.
The "Lebanon Ditch," as it was called, included six locks, four within a few miles of Lebanon and two at Middletown. Because of maintenance problems, traffic ceased on the Warren County Canal in 1852 and the state sold the property in 1855.
Canal dimensions and facts
Ohio canal minimum construction standards included: 4 feet water depth; 40 feet wide at water level; 10 feet wide towpath; and slopes 4-1/2 feet horizontal to 4 feet perpendicular.
The Miami & Erie Canal had 105 locks to raise and lower the canal boats along the waterway. Each lock was 90 feet long and 15 feet wide.
Loramie Summit, 21 miles in length, was the high point of the canal -- 521 feet above the Ohio River at Cincinnati and 395 feet above Lake Erie at Toledo.
The average canal boat was 78 feet long, 14 feet-10 inches wide, and cost about $2,100. The speed limit was four miles per hour.
Primary sources of water for the canal were three man-made lakes -- Grand Lake St. Marys, Lake Loramie and Indian Lake -- plus the Great Miami, Mad, St. Marys and Auglaize rivers.
Hydraulic Canals
The Hamilton Hydraulic, or the Hamilton & Rossville Hydraulic -- a system supplying water power to shops and mills -- spurred one of Hamilton's greatest periods of industrial and population growth (1840-1860). Henry S. Earhart, a merchant and civil engineer, is credited with the idea of bringing water from the Great Miami River north of Hamilton into the town as a source of power for nonexistent industries.
Much of the preliminary work was by John W. Erwin, an engineer who also collaborated with Earhart and John C. Skinner in building turnpikes, railroads, other waterway projects and civic improvements.
The Hamilton and Rossville Hydraulic Company was directed by Gov. William Bebb, Lewis D. Campbell, John Woods, Laomi Rigdon, Dr. Jacob Hitell, Earhart, Erwin and Skinner and other leaders.
The hydraulic began about four miles north of Hamilton on the river, where a dam was built to divert water into the system. Nearby, two reservoirs stored water for the hydraulic, whose main canal continued south along North Fifth Street to present Market Street (then Stable Street). There it took a sharp west turn to the river at the present intersection of Market Street and North Monument Avenue, between the former Hamilton Municipal Building and the Hamiltonian Hotel.
The first water passed through the system in January 1845. As the water flowed through the canal, it turned millstones in the hydraulic. The project had been a risky one because there were no shops along its course to use the power when the company was organized in 1842.
The gamble paid off. Several small industries were built on the hydraulic in the 1840s. One was the Miami Paper Mill, later known as the Beckett Paper Company. The hydraulic remained a principal source of power for Hamilton industries through the 1870s when the stationary steam engine became affordable.
Later, most of the canal was covered and/or filled. The hydraulic attracted Henry Ford to Hamilton after World War I when he sought a site for a tractor factory. Ford built a plant -- that soon converted to producing auto parts -- at the north end of North Fifth Street so it could take advantage of power provided by a branch of the hydraulic.
A Rossville hydraulic also was built on the west side of the Great Miami River, but it never achieved the success of the Hamilton system. Construction started in 1849 on the Rossville hydraulic, which originated at a dam across the river near the present intersection of North B Street and West Elkton Road. It continued south along the west bank of the river to present Wayne Avenue, where the borrowed water returned to the Great Miami River.
John W. Erwin, who had helped to plan the Hamilton Hydraulic, also was a key figure in developing the Middletown Hydraulic.
The Middletown Hydraulic opened in 1852, supplying water power for shops and mills. Middletown leaders authorized its construction in April 1852.
Heading the project were John W. Erwin, Thomas Sherlock, J. B. Oglesby, Richard H. Hendrickson and Joseph Cooper. Erwin, an engineer, had also designed the Hamilton Hydraulic, which opened in 1845.
The two-mile Middletown Hydraulic drew water from the Great Miami River north of the town, starting near the site of the present Miami River Preserve along Ohio 73. The hydraulic ran parallel to the Miami & Erie Canal (now Verity Parkway) before turning west and returning to the river at the west end of Fourth Street.
"The building of the hydraulic laid the foundation for the prosperity of Middletown," said the 1882 Butler County history.
John W. Erwin also built two paper mills in Middletown, including one on the hydraulic while the waterway was under construction. That mill later became the Sorg Paper Company.
Erwin, who died at his residence in Hamilton April 17, 1889, also built hydraulic systems in Franklin and Troy in Ohio; Goshen, Elkhart and Bristol in Indiana; and in Constantine, Michigan. The native of New Castle, Delaware, was a resident engineer on the Miami-Erie Canal from 1837 until 1879.
Canal and newly-opened railroad competed for business in 1852
Not everyone welcomed the September 1851 opening of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad that brought the first rail services to the latter two cities in its name. Those unhappy with the event included patrons and operators of the Miami & Erie Canal, a transportation system that had connected the same cities for more than 20 years.
The canal -- built by the state -- had carried passengers and freight between Cincinnati and Hamilton on a seven-hour schedule. The privately-financed CH&D did it in an hour or less.
Statewide, a canal report said, railroads in 1852 took advantage of a loophole in a new Ohio law, offering lower rates to shippers at places where the two competed. The statute mandated uniform railroad freight rates, but "no penalty is provided for the violation of its provisions," canal managers explained.
A canal official said the CH&D was determined "to monopolize the carrying trade between these points" (Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton). "We deemed it our duty to do all in our power, not only to sustain those who had made large investments in warehouses and boats on the canal, but also to protect the revenues of the state," said a state report for 1852 operations.
Weather affected both systems, but in the first full year of head-to-head competition, the southern half of the 249-mile Miami & Erie Canal suffered the most.
Dec. 14, 1851, ice forced a 17-day closing of the frozen section between Cincinnati and St. Marys. The 95-mile Cincinnati-Piqua portion froze again Jan. 11, 1852, stopping traffic for 25 days. There was a 10-day closure on the Cincinnati-St. Marys section after March 10, 1852, so repairs could be completed on that segment.
The canal was closed for seven days, starting April 14, when an embankment washed out after the unauthorized installation of a pipe in Cincinnati.
A breach in the levee at Camp Washington near Cincinnati June 14 resulted in a three-day interruption. A leak Sept. 7 at Cincinnati brought another closure.
On the southern half of the Miami & Erie, the report said, "navigation was suspended 10 days by breakage, by ice 42 days and by cleaning and repairing 10 days, in all 62 days. The mills and manufacturing establishments in the city of Cincinnati were deprived of water 20 days only during the entire year."
During some of the 1852 shutdowns, canal directors completed improvements. "On the six-mile level north of the town of Hamilton," the report said, "was built an extensive waste gate and culvert combined. This culvert was erected for the purpose of passing the water of a small branch or run under the canal, which before passed into it, causing at every freshet a large amount of earth, gravel and stone to be deposited in the canal, greatly to the detriment of navigation."
Work also started that year on building a replacement dam north of Middletown.
Of the $215,078 spent that year to operate and maintain the canal's southern division, more than half, $128,244, went to repairs.
Statewide, the Board of Public Works reported canal revenues in 1852 totaled $688,775, a drop of $167,577 from 1851, the peak year. That amount represented a 19.6 percent setback.
On the entire length of the Miami & Erie Canal, income dipped from $357,494.25 to $329,529.24 -- a decrease of $27,965.01, or 7.8 percent.
Comparison of 1851 and 1852 canal collections by cities on the CH&D showed the following declines: Cincinnati from $71,504 to $51,596; Hamilton from $6,377 to $3,611; and Dayton from $37,671 to $34,964. Annual canal income the three cities went down $25,381, or 22 percent -- from $115,552 in 1851 to $90,171 a year later.
The canal continued in use for several decades, but it never regained the prosperity it achieved before the arrival of railroads in western Ohio.
Barge canal proposals advanced in post-WW I era
In an effort to contain the costs of power and raw materials, Hamilton's expanding industrial community supported plans for a barge canal through the city in the post-World War I era. With a Lima congressman leading the way, cities in Southwestern Ohio united in urging the federal government to create an inland waterway linking the Ohio River and Lake Erie.
Backing Rep. Benjamin F. Welty in Congress was Rep. Warren Gard of Hamilton, a fellow Democrat.
Welty gained congressional approval for a survey and cost estimate of transforming the unused Miami & Erie Canal into a barge canal. The study was supposed to include the price tag for building and maintaining locks, dams and reservoirs.
After the House Canals and Railway Committee adopted Welty's resolution, a Dayton newspaper described it as the "first step toward a barge canal connecting the Great Lakes with the Gulf of Mexico -- a transportation system of such gigantic proportions as the mind can scarcely conceive and an improvement worth millions of dollars to the State of Ohio alone."
The Dayton Journal in January 1919 saw the proposed western Ohio waterway as "second in importance only to the great Panama Canal." That 51-mile ship canal had opened less than five years earlier (Aug. 15, 1914).
The case for the canal's revival had been boosted by the inability of U. S. railroads in the winter of 1917-1918 to deliver both war materials to eastern ports and coal and food to the remainder of the nation. New inland waterways, asserted Welty, would be "capable of solving such railway congestions as this country passed through last winter."
The new canal would follow the route of the Miami & Erie, which had a minimum depth of four feet. Its width was 26 feet at the bottom, sloping up to 40 feet at the water line. Beside it was a 10-foot towpath for horses and mules, the source of power for the canalboats.
The expanded 1920s version was to be at least 12 feet deep and no more than 16 feet deep. Welty's resolution didn't specify a minimum width. It said the canal should be wide enough "to permit the passage of vessels now used in coal, grain and iron ore traffic on Lake Erie." Later, a width of 300 feet was suggested.
It was assumed that towboats on the new canal would be steam-powered, but Welty said "gasoline and electrically-propelled tugs or towboats could be utilized."
A delegation from the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers inspected the proposed Miami-Erie route in October 1920, about a week before the presidential election which pitted Ohioan against Ohioan. Republican Warren G. Harding bested Democrat James M. Cox, a native of Butler County, in that contest.
The Republican trend that November also ended Welty's two-term congressional career. Hamilton's Warren Gard, after four House terms, didn't seek re-election in 1920. Without congressional backing, the proposed Cincinnati-Toledo barge canal went into limbo for a few years.
Hamilton civic leaders renewed their plea for construction of a barge canal through the city in 1931. A board of senior officers of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers convened in the Butler County Courthouse to hear testimony on the proposal, a major revision of a 1919 plan which had died after a $500,000 federal study.
The 1931 campaign sought widening the Great Miami River from Dayton south to its mouth on the Ohio River at the Ohio-Indiana border. It would have included building three locks and dams. One would have been at Woodsdale between Hamilton and Middletown. The others would have been at New Baltimore and Cleves in Hamilton County.
Area leaders envisioned the 41-mile project as a logical addition to the recently-completed Ohio River navigation system. "The development of our rivers is a never finished accomplishment," declared President Herbert Hoover in October 1929 as he dedicated the last of 50 locks and dams, creating a nine-foot pool over the length of the 981-mile Ohio River.
Supporters of canalizing the Great Miami saw it as a way to counter rising railroad freight rates. That point was stressed repeatedly by area industrialists during the Feb. 18, 1931, courthouse hearing before the Corps of Engineers officers.
Preliminary government studies estimated the canal would handle 1,080,521 tons inbound and 490,476 tons outbound annually, conservative figures based on local information presented at the hearing.
Middletown industries reported annual inbound freight at 1,139,775 and outbound tonnage of 308,471 tons, most of which could be transported more economically by barge. In Hamilton, based on data form the city's largest industries, annual tonnage was 1,650,553 inbound and 1,132,715 outbound, a total of 2,783,268 tons.
Cheaper transportation for industry wouldn't be the only advantage of a barge canal, advocates emphasized. City Manager Russell P. Price cited potential benefits for Hamilton citizens.
"It would assure Hamilton of a dependable source of water, where now it must depend upon wells as a source of supply," Price said. "In years hence, as Hamilton's population increases by normal growth, it must look for a more dependable source for its water supply, especially in times of drought. By canalizing the river, infiltration plants could be built and surface water used instead of the wells."
In 1930 Hamilton's population was 52,176 people. That represented a 31.5 percent increase during the 1920s, a boom period for the city. The 1930 total was 12,501 greater than the 1920 census of 39,675.
A new president with job-creating programs encouraged area business leaders in 1934 to mount a third campaign to place Hamilton and Middletown on a barge canal.
A drive to rebuild the unused Miami & Erie Canal revived when Franklin D. Roosevelt moved into the White House in 1933 after defeating incumbent Herbert Hoover in the 1932 election. Roosevelt -- who took office at the depth of the Great Depression -- launched several programs which raised the hopes of local canal promoters.
In July 1934, under the leadership of John E. Northway, secretary-manager of the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce, representatives from Hamilton and Middletown took their case to Washington, D. C. Their goal was canalization of 41 miles of the Great Miami River from Dayton to the Ohio River.
The price tag, according to consultants, was $19 million, or about $500,000 per mile. It would have provided at least two years of work for 7,000 construction workers.
"In addition to aiding recovery," the Journal-News said the Great Miami plan "would mean opening the entire lower part of the Miami Valley to outside industry; transforming the river into an important freight transportation system and providing for new pleasure resort facilities at certain points within its confines." The latter was a reference to lakes proposed behind two of the dams (2,900 acres at Cleves and 4,200 acres at New Baltimore).
A federal public works grant was expected to pay 30 percent of labor and materials costs. Income would be generated by hydro-electric plants built into the three dams. "It has been estimated that the erection of a 35-foot dam at Cleves, a 48-foot dam at New Baltimore, and a 28-foot dam at Woodsdale would enable the development of electricity to an amount of 123 million kilowatt hours annually," the Journal-News said.
Local officials believed inclusion of the hydro-electric plants and recreation areas would be clinchers as details of the Great Miami barge canal were discussed July 17, 1934, before the Army Rivers and Harbors Board in Washington, D. C.
But for the third time within 15 years, the Army Corps of Engineers wasn't impressed. As in 1920 and 1931, the Corps killed the idea of a Great Miami barge canal.