Conception By 1790, England had thirty years and all of continental Europe's many canals to draw on for the experience. In the years after the
American Revolutionary War, the young United States began a period of economic expansion away from the coast. American men of influence had always kept an eye on news from Europe, especially from Great Britain, so when in the years from 1790–1794 the British Parliament passed eighty-one canal and navigation acts, American leaders were paying attention. In Massachusetts, several ideas were proposed for bringing goods to the principal port,
Boston, and connecting to the interior. For about three years there were plans to connect the upper reaches of the
Connecticut River, above the falls at Enfield Connecticut, to Boston through a canal to the Charles. Sullivan was made the company's president; its vice president and eventually chief engineer was Loammi Baldwin, a native of
Woburn, who had attended science lectures at
Harvard College and was a friend of
physicist Benjamin Thompson.
Construction The route of the canal was first surveyed in August 1793. Local lore is that it is on this expedition that Baldwin was introduced to
a particular apple variety that now bears his name. The route survey, however, was sufficiently uncertain that a second survey was made in October. Due to discrepancies in their results, Baldwin was authorized by the proprietors to travel to
Philadelphia in an effort to secure the services of
William Weston, a British engineer working on several canal and turnpike projects in Pennsylvania under contract to the
Schuylkill and Susquehanna Navigation Company. Baldwin's application to the Navigation company was successful: Weston was authorized to travel to Massachusetts. In July and August 1794, Weston, accompanied by Baldwin and several of the latter's sons surveyed and identified two possible routes for the proposed canal. The proprietors then secured contracts to acquire the land for the canal, some of which was donated by its owners; in sixteen cases the proprietors used
eminent domain proceedings to take the land. The basic plan was for the canal's principal water source to be the
Concord River at its highest point in
North Billerica, with additional water to be drawn as needed from
Horn Pond in Woburn. The site where the canal met the Concord River had been the site of a grist mill since the 17th century, which the proprietors purchased along with all of its water rights. From this point, the canal descended six miles to the Merrimack River in East Chelmsford (now western
Lowell) and 22 miles to the Charles River in Charlestown. In late September 1794 ground was broken in North Billerica. Work on the canal was performed by a number of contractors. In some instances, local workers were contracted to dig sections, while in other areas contract labor was brought in from Massachusetts and New Hampshire for the construction work. A variety of engineering challenges were overcome, leading to innovations in construction materials and equipment. A form of
hydraulic cement (made in part from volcanic materials imported at great expense from
Sint Eustatius in the West Indies) was used to make the stone locks watertight. Because of its cost and the cost of working in stone, a number of the locks were made of wood instead. An innovation was made in earth-moving equipment with the development of a precursor of the
dump truck, where one side of the carrier was hinged to allow the rapid dumping of material at the desired location. Water was diverted into the canal in December 1800, and by 1803 the canal was filled to Charlestown. The first boat operated on part of the canal on April 22, 1802.
Merrimack canals A variety of enterprises by all or a few of "the proprietors of the Middlesex Canal" which were the corporations' principal stockholders and the board came together with other third parties or acted in a few cases as a combined whole to fund the development of other stretches of the canal up the Merrimack above Chelmsford. By the completion of construction between Medford and Chelmsford, several extensions envisioned all along were also nearing completion. The whole system was complete in 1814, The other direction, the canal ran from'' 'Middlesex Village'
or East Chelmsford, Massachusetts (The Town of Chelmsford was later divided and East Chelmsford was renamed Lowell, Massachusetts, now the fourth most populous city in Massachusetts, primarily because of the Lowell textile industry spawned by the transportation infrastructure and water power along the Middlesex Canal and the Nashua and Merrimack Rivers), through several sparser settled Middlesex County outlier suburbs such as Billerica, and Tewksbury, then closer-in suburban towns with the lower course running towards Boston generally along water courses nearly paralleling the routes of MA 38 from Wilmington, thence in Woburn along the Aberjona River from Horn Pond through Winchester (or Waterfield'') into the
Mystic Lakes and down the Mystic River between
Arlington and
Somerville on the west bank and
Medford along the east (left) bank, until the river and canal ran into the Boston Harbor tidewater in the Charlestown basin. At first, it terminated in
Medford, but was later extended to
Charlestown, Massachusetts, with a branch near Medford Center to the Mystic River. indicate the downriver trips from Concord to Boston took four days, and the reverse trip upriver took on average five days. Before the corporation was dissolved, the proprietors proposed to convert the canal into an aqueduct to bring
drinking water to Boston, but this effort was unsuccessful. After the canal ceased operation its infrastructure quickly fell into disrepair. In 1852 the company ordered dilapidated bridges over the canal torn down and the canal underneath filled in. Permission was given for the company to liquidate and pay the proceeds to the stockholders, and its 1793 charter was revoked in 1860. The company's records were given over to the state for preservation. The canal corporation's land and dam in North Billerica, as well as the water rights on the Concord River, were sold to Charles and
Thomas Talbot, who erected the Talbot Mills complex that now stands in the
Billerica Mills Historic District. Parts of the canal bed were covered by roads in the 20th century, including parts of the
Mystic Valley Parkway in Medford and
Winchester, and parts of Boston Avenue in Somerville and Medford. Boston Avenue crosses the Mystic River where the canal did. Parts of the canal in eastern Somerville were filled in by leveling Ploughed Hill in the late 19th century. Ploughed Hill was the site of
notorious anti-Catholic riots in 1832 and had subsequently been abandoned.
Impact The opening of the canal diminished the commercial viability of the port of
Newburyport, Massachusetts, the outlet of the
Merrimack River, since all trade from the Merrimack Valley in New Hampshire now went via the canal to Boston, rather than through the sometimes difficult-to-navigate river. The canal also played a prominent role in the eventual growth of Lowell as a major industrial center. Its opening brought on a decline in business at the
Pawtucket Canal, a transit canal opened in the 1790s which bypassed the
Pawtucket Falls just downstream from the Middlesex Canal's northern end.
Its owners converted the Pawtucket Canal for use as a power provider, leading to the growth of the mill businesses on its banks beginning in the 1820s. The Middlesex Canal was used for the transport of raw materials, finished goods, and personnel to and from Lowell. The canal's use of the Concord River had significant long-term environmental consequences. The raising of the dam height at North Billerica was believed to cause flooding of seasonal hay meadows upstream and prompted numerous lawsuits against the canal proprietors. These were all ultimately unsuccessful, due in part to the uncertainty of the science, and also in part to the political power of the proprietors. As the canal was in decline in its later years, the state legislature finally ordered the dam height to be lowered, but then repealed the order before it was executed. Analysis done in the 20th century suggests that the dam, which still stands (although no longer at its greatest height), probably had a flooding effect on hay meadows as far as 25 miles up the watershed. Many of these meadows had to be abandoned, and some now form portions of the
Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge; they are classified as
wetlands. The canal featured a number of innovations and was referred to as an example for later engineering projects. The use of
hydraulic cement to mortar the locks is the first known use of the material in North America. The route was surveyed using a Wye level (an early version of a
dumpy level), again the first recorded use in America. At North Billerica, where the canal met the Concord River at the millpond, a floating towpath was devised to handle the needs of crossing traffic patterns. ==Today==