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Canals

Main Street wasn't always Akron's main street. It used to be the old Pennsylvania and Ohio Canal, an east-west waterway that brought in machinery, provisions and people and took away wheat, wool and wood. The canal opened in 1840, but railroads made it obsolete within four decades, and it was filled in. That canal is buried beneath the pavement, but you can see another from Main Street: the more historically important Ohio & Erie Canal, which fueled Akron's growth when it opened in 1827. The locks of the Ohio & Erie functioned until the Great Flood of 1913. City workers had to dynamite the locks to relieve a torrent of water that threatened downtown.

A "mule skinner" with a whip in hand walks along the towpath of the Ohio & Erie Canal ahead of a packet boat. The canal served Akron from 1827 until 1913.

Graveyard of Akron's Canals. Buried in the upper basin of the Ohio Canal, not far from Lock No. 1, are the hulks of a once mighty fleet.

On a slow boat to Cleveland...or Portsmouth, Ohio. the two towns were at opposite ends of the 309 mile Ohio Canal, and you could make the trip in 80 hours in the 1830's. Akron's population was about 1,300 at that time.

State-owned boats such as this were about the only ones still in use in 1900, when this photo was made. Commercial boats had lost most of their business to the railroads. The Col. Charles Dick, above, was named for an Akronite who became a U.S. senator and national leader of the Republican party.

Looking northeast from above Lock 2 in 1888, showing the area between the present Buchtel Avenue and State Street.

Akron launched its last canal boat from a yard near W. Buchtel Avenue and Water Street in 1909. It was owned and operated by the State, which used it for canal maintenance until the 1913 flood ended canal traffic. Canal boat building began in Akron in 1827 and was the town's first industry.

Docked at Old Portage on the Ohio Canal, just north of Akron, are two freight boats. The "Sterling" was based in Peninsula and probably was built there. The gentleman in the top hat seems to be drawing disapproving looks from the deckhands.

The Ohio Canal had passed the peak of its commercial importance (because of railroads) when this photo was shot in the 1890's, but the waterway's beauty and tranquility were undeniable. You're looking south between Thornton and South Streets.

Three-cabin freighters like this one, with its cargo of lumber, were called "family boats." They housed the captain and his family in the stern cabin, mules or horses in the center stables and the crew in the bow cabin. The last freight traffic on the O&E Canal, that of the early 1900's, consisted almost exclusively of family boats carrying coal from the mines in Tuscarawas county to the paper mill in Akron or the steamers at the Cleveland docks.

Canal men were known for their ingenuity and tenacity amidst the adversity created by the canal's long decline in the second half of the 19th century. Shown above is an example of that ingenuity in the form of a 6 room house built by "Captain" Pearly Nye from one of his canal boats. The photo shows Ny and his "boat house" in the 1890's. Ny's home was located on the canal near Bowery Street, where B.F. Goodrich stands today.

Post 1913

City Boat Livery was a busy spot on a summer day. It was one of many boat liveries in Summit County and was located on the Ohio Canal, off Bowery near the shores of Summit Lake.

This is a view of the canal leading into Summit Lake.

Lock 2 of the Ohio Canal can be found in downtown Akron at the intersection of Canal and State streets on the southeast corner. The small inset photo was taken a few years after the great flood.