George Washington and the Potomac River

George Washington is often referred to as the "Father of Our Country", and he did much during his lifetime to see that young America grew and prospered. Washington devoted both personal time and energy toward developing the Potomac River into a navigable waterway. He hoped to use the Potomac to improve travel to the interior of the country. His dream was to open the Ohio Valley and enable its vast raw materials to be shipped to eastern cities and seaports, thereby binding the states together in a framework of trade and mutual interest.

As a young man George Washington was hired by Lord Fairfax of Virginia to survey his western landholdings. The expeditions took the future president west along the Potomac River into the Ohio Valley. Many obstacles in the Potomac obstructed navigation. Great Falls was the most serious of these obstacles. At Great Falls the river dropped approximately 75 feet in a half mile through a rock filled gorge. By-passes in these non-navigable areas would have to be created if the Potomac was to become a commercial water route.

Early in 1772 Washington secured a charter from Virginia to open the Potomac for navigation. The eventual method included building five skirting canals around the Potomac River's rapids and falls. A skirting canal would permit a boat to circumvent a particular river hazard by bringing it inland through a man-made channel that by-passed the obstacle. The mainstream of the Potomac would be utilized wherever navigation was possible. However, the State of Maryland had jurisdiction over the Potomac River and failed to endorse the legislation.

In 1784 after the Revolutionary War, George Washington, now a national hero, reignited his idea for improving the Potomac route. This time the governors of Virginia and Maryland supported his proposals. This enterprise, the Patowmack Company, was organized in 1785 and Washington was elected its first president in May. The objective of the company was to develop a series of river improvements designed to extend the effective navigation of the Potomac to the highest possible point. Washington frequently supervised construction himself, as work was both difficult and dangerous. Channels in the river were deepened and boulders removed. Skirting canals were dug on either the Maryland or the Virginia shoreline opposite the location of the five falls of the Potomac. To overcome elevation changes locks were built in two of the skirting canals, at Little Falls, Maryland and Great Falls, Virginia. The lock system installed at Great Falls has been recognized as an engineering marvel.

George Washington died in 1799 and did not see the completion of the Patowmack Company improvements in 1802. In 1811, the company's peak year, 1300 boats shipped 16,350 tons of goods for an total estimated value of $925,074.80.

Tolls in the amount of $22,542.89 were collected that year by the company. A boat was poled downriver and could carry up to 15 tons of cargo. These flatboats were about 75' long, 5' wide and pointed at both ends. Items shipped included flour, corn, whiskey, tobacco, furs, timber and iron ore.

Of the Potomac River's 287 miles, the Patowmack Company made about 220 miles navigable, from the mouth of the Savage River to Tidewater. However, transportation still depended far too much on the river's unpredictable currents. Some years there were only about 45 days when the water level was sufficient for travel. It seemed as if the river was either too shallow due to drought or overflowing because of flooding. Boats were sometimes torn up in whirlpools or rapids. Although the boats could be poled upstream against the current, they were often dismantled in Georgetown and sold for lumber. The crew would then walk 200 miles home and build another boat for their next trip. George Washington's dreams and the Patowmack Company's efforts to fashion the Potomac River into a thriving commercial water route were a failure.

The decline of the Patowmack Company coincided with the dawn of the canal era in the United States. The age of simple river improvements had ended. The new era saw attention turned to building permanent artificial canals as an effective means of transportation. Canals combined the cheapness of water travel with the reliability and ease of an artificial waterway.

On November 5, 1823 the first Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Convention was held in Washington. Under consideration was a proposal to build a canal along the Potomac route from the nation's capital all the way to the Ohio River. All of the counties from Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania through which the canal would pass sent representatives. This assembly led to the chartering of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company by the State of Virginia on January 27, 1824. The rights of the old Patowmack Company were transferred to the new enterprise.

Actual construction on the C&O Canal began on July 4, 1828 with eventual completion as far west as Cumberland, Maryland by October, 1850. Not one spade full of earth was ever turned on the "Great National Project" beyond Cumberland. The 184.5 mile segment of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal between Georgetown and Cumberland did operate as a commercial waterway until 1924, but George Washington's elusive dream of a Potomac water route to the Ohio Valley was never realized.