18th century , and part of the adjacent states based upon the river surveys in 1790 and 1791 showing 1794 Schuylkill and Susquehanna Navigation company summit crossing construction with its highlighted in red map of
Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, showing topography of the summit crossing between
Lebanon and
Myerstown with the alignment highlighted The original engineering concept developed by the Society and the navigation company was to build a canal up the
Schuylkill River to
Norristown, improving the Schuylkill River from there to
Reading. While from Reading, the canal was to extend to the
Susquehanna River via
Lebanon. This would have required a four-mile summit crossing between
Tulpehocken and the
Quittapahilla with an artificial waterway connecting two separate river valleys; namely the Susquehanna and the Schuylkill watersheds. Its successful completion would have made the middle reach, the first
summit-level canal in the United States. The term refers to a canal that rises then falls, as opposed to a
lateral canal, which has a continuous fall only. In this case, the proposed canal at 80 miles in length would rise over from the west at the Susquehanna River to the summit and then fall over to the Schuylkill River to the east. It was to be the golden link between
Philadelphia and the vast interior of Pennsylvania and beyond. This proposed summit crossing offered a severe test of 18th-century engineering skills, materials and construction techniques. For both designing and operating a water-conveyance transportation system through an area where sinkholes are common, and surface water is scarce. Ultimately, the 1794 engineering concept was flawed, as the water supply for the summit crossing was inadequate and the technology for minimizing supply losses was still another century away. While the 1794 construction was never completed, the company's successor, the
Union Canal, was faced with the same challenges of sealing the canal bed to conserve water. The summit crossing was never able to handle the canal traffic. Even with two reservoirs constructed at the summit as feeders to the canal, the Union Canal still required pumped water from a
waterworks at the junction of
Swatara Creek and
Clarks Run and later from a second waterworks on Furnace Creek on the Quitipahilla. At the first works, there were four pumps necessary to provide summit water, but only two could be powered by river water. The other two had to be powered by
Cornish steam engines, a technology available in 1828 when the canal opened but not in 1791. Despite all of these problems, in 1791, the enthusiasm for this venture was such that it didn't seem at all impossible that Pennsylvania would have succeeded in securing the commercial prestige which the
Erie Canal captured for
New York. By 1795 however, the navigation company's project was a commercial failure. The result was that with the onset of the Erie Canal still some thirty years into the future, Philadelphia lost the early initiative in water transportation. Despite Philadelphia and Pennsylvania's "heroic efforts" to hold their share of the internal trade which in 1796 was forty percent more than New York; by 1825 with the opening of the Erie Canal, Philadelphia's trade was forty-five percent less than New York. New York City's rise to preeminence among American cities was an important development, but was not a foregone conclusion. At the time the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Navigation Company was chartered, Philadelphia was the leading American city; its residents, as well as others, generally expected it to take on more of a metropolitan role as the nation became independent, and prepared the city for that role. Instead, Philadelphia slid into second place. By 1807, New York was the acknowledged commercial capital of the nation; by 1837, it was the American metropolis. Philadelphia's dismal failure to build the "golden link" thirty years before New York opened the Erie Canal was a major factor in that slide into second place. The idea of uniting the
Schuylkill and
Susquehanna rivers by a canal was first proposed and discussed by
William Penn in 1690. Penn's plan, conceived a few years after he had founded Philadelphia, was to make "a second settlement" on the Susquehanna River, similar in size to that of Philadelphia itself. He made this plan, titled "Some Proposals for a Second Settlement in the Province of Pennsylvania" public in
England in 1690. The route envisioned by Penn was a road up the west bank of the Schuylkill to the mouth of
French Creek near present-day
Phoenixville, heading west to the Susquehanna via present day
Lancaster and a Susquehanna
tributary,
Conestoga Creek. One of the first projects the committee looked at in February 1769 was a canal between the
Chesapeake and
Delaware bays using the
Chester River in
Maryland and
Duck Creek, near
Smyrna, Delaware some south of the present location of the
Chesapeake and Delaware Canal (C&D Canal). of the then Province (now State) of Pennsylvania, and
John Sellers.
Samuel Rhoads, a Philadelphia architect, vice-president of the Society and colonial mayor of Philadelphia, had also been on the survey with
Rittenhouse and company. Rhoads had been impressed with the "... apparent practicality of a canal on the Tulpehocken-Swatara route. But, he asked Franklin, whether it was better to dig a canal, or just to dam up the rivers and creeks to provide for navigation?" The
Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly then appointed a committee of its own to survey the Susquehanna, Schuylkill, and
Lehigh Rivers and in 1773, David Rittenhouse delivered its report. Nothing became of this work due to the coming of the Revolution. In total, the Society sponsored studies of three routes to the connect Philadelphia with the
Susquehanna Valley: one by canal across the
Delmarva Peninsula (1769-1771), the second a paved road from the Susquehanna Valley to a river port south of Philadelphia and the third (1773) a canal using the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Rivers and their tributaries, the
Tulpehocken and
Swatara creeks. Governor
Thomas Mifflin commissioned
Timothy Matlack (1736–1829),
Samuel Maclay (1741–1811) and
John Adlum (1759–1836) to survey the Swatara, West Branch of the Susquehanna River,
Allegheny River, French Creek with a portage to Lake Erie, the
Kiskiminetas/
Conemaugh to
Stony Creek, the future site of
Johnstown, with a second portage to the
Frankstown branch of the Juniata and then down the Juniata to the Susquehanna River and onto
Harrisburg. Maclay and the other commissioners found that most of the waterways could be constructed, but several portages were recommended to reduce costs such as the Lebanon summit crossing of four miles, a road from French Creek to
Presque Isle on Lake Erie and an portage over the Allegheny Mountains at Poplar run. The latter crossing was south of the route eventually selected in 1831 for the
Portage Railroad which, when built, was in length. Both the 1791 and 1831 routes converged on the
Little Conemaugh River as the route into
Pittsburgh. On February 10, 1791, reports were given on the second round of river surveys regarding improvements to the
Delaware River from the bay to the New York state line. Improvements were also recommended for the Schuylkill river with a portage road or canal from Reading to the Susquehanna River, and improvements for the North and West Branches of the Susquehanna and a second Allegheny portage to reach Lake Erie. Critically, the Society had yet to recommend or devise a way over the summit near Lebanon joining the "...Quitapahilla and Swatara creeks, the latter leading to the Susquehanna ..." river. • Up the Schuylkill River from Philadelphia to the mouth of the Tulpehocken, near
Reading, Pennsylvania - . • Westward, up the Tulpehocken Creek to the east end of the proposed summit canal crossing - . The plan was to clear thirty miles of the creek and cut a canal ( wide by deep) for the last up to the summit crossing. An estimated ten locks were needed to ascend this distance. • Length of the summit canal - . The plan was to dig a canal on average deep and wide, a distance of approximately . This was also assumed to common earth excavation. • Down Quitipahilla to Swatara - . The 1791 report offered no detail on how this estimate was derived. • Down Swatara to Susquehanna River - . The 1791 report offered no detail on how this estimate was derived. The concept of navigation in the context of the post-
colonial United States and 1790 timeframe was predominately focused on improving river systems. roughly nine times the original estimate. James Brindley (1745-1820), a well-known canal engineer and nephew of the famous British canal engineer
James Brindley (1716-1772), was in Delaware in 1791. Brindley had been originally recruited in 1774 by the
Potomac Company for the
Little Falls Bypass Canal on the
Potomac River. Subsequently, Brindley worked on the
Susquehanna Canal (1783-) in Maryland,
Santee Canal in
South Carolina (1786) and the
James River Canal in
Virginia (1787). but that effort with private financing was insufficient. In the Pennsylvania plan, the Society proposed a canal route, 426 miles to open a communication between the Schuylkill and Susquehanna rivers from Reading on the Schuylkill to Middletown on the Susquehanna. The second was the
Delaware and Schuylkill Navigation Company incorporated in 1792 to open a canal between the Schuylkill River and the Delaware River.
Robert Morris was the president of both companies. Up to that point in time, the policy had been to only allow damages to improved lands.
Samuel Powel (1738-1793) and University of Pennsylvania provost
William Smith (1727-1803). also was a director. was a director as well as the then
treasurer of the United States,
Samuel Meredith (1741-1817) and his brother in law, a signatory to both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution,
George Clymer (1739-1813). Nicholson eventually has 270 shares on which $64,300 is paid; Robert Morris, 52 shares and $14,300. In recruiting stock subscriptions, the Commissioners were required to advertise in three newspapers for a month with one being in the German language. One of the administration's first official acts as part of
Hamilton's economic plan was to "...pour thousands of dollars into the pockets of prescient speculators by funding depreciated American bonds at 100 percent of their face value. The resulting ebullience in the investment markets facilitated the flotation of a series of new companies ..." "...the essential economic function of Philadelphia's merchant community was to link the city's hinterland with its overseas markets. It was the merchants who shipped flour to Lisbon, lumber to London, flaxseed to Belfast; and it was they who imported vast amounts of cloth and hardware from London and the outports." This was acclaimed "another instance of the public spirit of the inhabitants of this state," though in reality it testifies chiefly to the speculative spirit then running riot. The problem was that speculators such as Robert Morris had too much credit. The earlier planning for locating the canal commissioned by the Society up through 1791 had been performed by members such as
John Lukens, surveyor general of Pennsylvania and the eminent American astronomer and surveyor,
David Rittenhouse. In this case, the proposed canal at 80 miles in length would rise 192 feet over 42 miles from the west at the Susquehanna River to the summit and then fall 311 feet over 34 miles to the Schuylkill River to the east. Unfortunately, most of the four-mile summit crossing was underlain by the
Ontelaunee Formation, a "...dark grayish-brown weathering
dolomite ..." or carbonate bedrock. Other equally important parts of the summit crossing were constructed through the Annville Formation, a "...very thick bedded, finely crystalline, light blue-gray to light pinkish-gray, high-calcium
limestone." by 1885, the Union canal was sold at a sheriff sale, "unable to cope with ... (competition from) ... the railroads, poor planning, and the carbonate bedrock of Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. In August of that year, the company approves Brindley's engineering concept for crossing the summit. It was to be a twenty-five deep cut, thirty-feet wide at the bottom and watered to a depth of four feet. It was one of the most severe epidemics in the United States. At the height of the panic from the epidemic in late August 1793, the Company closed its offices, and they would remain closed through November of that year. Washington left Philadelphia which at that time was the
capital city for the country on the 30th of September to first dine at Norristown and then stay the night at what is now Trappe, Pennsylvania. The next day he traveled to
Reading, Pennsylvania on his way to meet up with the rest of the militia he ordered mobilized at
Carlisle. In 1802, the company had to fend off such an attempt and was only successful in holding onto its property and water rights through the sale of excess property, often whole farms were sold. In July 1811, the two corporations (Schuylkill & Susquehanna Navigation Company and Delaware and Schuylkill Canal company) were merged into the
Union Canal Company with Paleske as its first president and "...authorized to extend to Lake Erie and to build turnpikes along right of way; company is also given monopoly of lotteries in Pennsylvania until $400,000 is raised ..." == Legacy==