Delaware & Hudson Canal

with salt peter and gun powder, lit, and stuck into a hole in the rock. The workers then got quickly out of the way and waited for the blast. The danger came when they went back to see why the wick hadn't lit and got caught in the delayed blast. Many workers lost their lives that way.
Although beset by financial woes, market fluctuations, floods, even an outbreak of cholera in its early years, by 1846 the hugely successful Delaware & Hudson Canal was the nation's largest private corporation, moving more than a million tons of coal a year. It was also this country's first vertically integrated corporation — it controlled both its product and the means of distribution for that product. At its peak, after several enlargements of width and depth, it moved more than a thousand boats each season, each carrying 140 tons of coal.
Gradually put out of business by the more economical and efficient railroad, the canal shut down operations in November of 1898, leaving a legacy as one of the greatest transportation systems in the country and an important contributor to the development of industry in 19th-Century America.

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Towpath
Waste Weirs
Locks
Canal Basin & Sluiceway
Dry Docks
Lock No. 50
Ending at Rondout
Demise of the Canal
The Canal & the Railroad
O&W & Summitville Station

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