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"The articles which compose the body of the following pamphlet, were originally published as leading editorials in the North America."--Introductory note
The Schuylkill River got its name, meaning "hidden river," from Dutch settlers who discovered its mouth sequestered behind the Delaware River's League Island. It later became a river of revolutions. Along its banks Revolutionary War battles were fought, and George Washington's army famously camped at Valley Forge. Later the river helped fuel the Industrial Revolution with coal from Schuylkill County shipped to Philadelphia via the Schuylkill Canal. The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad began here and grew into the largest corporation in the world. The iron and steel industry flourished along its waters. The Schuylkill River Desilting Project of the 1950s was the first large-scale cleanup of its kind and helped usher in an environmental revolution. The nation's first public water supply was developed here, and its first zoo and university overlook the river.
The Schuylkill River flows more than 100 miles from the mountains of the Pennsylvania Coal Region to the Delaware River. It passes through five counties - Schuylkill, Berks, Chester, Montgomery, and Philadelphia - and its valley is home to more than three million people, yet few are aware of the hidden ruins and traces left by a pioneering 200-year-old inland waterway: the Schuylkill Navigation. Some of it is literally buried in their own backyards.0Often called the Schuylkill Canal, this complex Navigation system actually boasted twenty-seven canals. The first of the anthracite-carrying routes in America, the 108-mile Navigation shadowed the Schuylkill River for nearly all its length. It once had more than thirty dams and slackwater pools, more than 100 stone locks, numerous aqueducts, and the first transportation tunnel in the nation. They were all built by hand starting in 1816.0In the 1940s, as part of a massive environmental cleanup of the river, this important and influential infrastructure was largely dismantled - but not entirely.What happened to the rest of it?0Photographer Sandy Sorlien resolved to find out. Over the course of seven years, she traveled upriver repeatedly to bushwhack along the riverbanks and to row and paddle in the river itself.0Along with Sorlien's full-color plates and explanatory essays, Inland features a selection of historic images, rare historic Schuylkill Navigation Company maps, and early Philadelphia Watering Committee plans. The book also includes a foreword by renowned landscape scholar John R. Stilgoe, an essay on regional transportation history by Mike Szilagyi, Trails Project Manager for the Schuylkill River Greenways Natural Heritage Area, and an afterword by Karen Young, Director of the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center.
In 1825, the Schuylkill Navigation Company completed a waterway of 108 miles, linking Port Carbon to Philadelphia. The waterway, known as the Schuylkill Navigation but commonly referred to today as the Schuylkill Canal, consisted of a system of interconnected canals (often called reaches), locks, and slack-water pools to transport anthracite coal. Before that time, Philadelphia depended on the import of coal from Europe. The Schuylkill Canal was operational until 1931, around the time of the collapse of commercial traffic in the navigation. Only two watered stretches of the canal remain today: the approximately 2.5 miles of the original 3.5 miles of Oakes Reach between Oaks and Mont Clare and the one-mile reach in Manayunk. While these areas are no longer used for navigation, they are enjoyed recreationally by many in the surrounding communities.
In a short time, the Schuylkill went from being considered waters of "uncommon purity" to being this country's dirtiest river. That distinction resulted in the Schuylkill River becoming the focus of a precedent-setting river cleanup effort from 1947 to 1951.The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania hired a team of engineers to free the Schuylkill from the millions of tons of coal sediment that had filled its bed and raised its floodplain.The Schuylkill River Project Engineers dredged the river and trapped sediment in desilting pools, the kind of practices that river restorations are undertaken to undo today. But at the end of the project, the Schuylkill emerged A RIVER AGAIN.
In 1825, the Schuylkill Navigation Company completed a waterway of 108 miles, linking Port Carbon to Philadelphia. The waterway, known as the Schuylkill Navigation but commonly referred to today as the Schuylkill Canal, consisted of a system of interconnected canals (often called reaches), locks, and slack-water pools to transport anthracite coal. Before that time, Philadelphia depended on the import of coal from Europe. The Schuylkill Canal was operational until 1931, around the time of the collapse of commercial traffic in the navigation. Only two watered stretches of the canal remain today: the approximately 2.5 miles of the original 3.5 miles of Oakes Reach between Oaks and Mont Clare and the one-mile reach in Manayunk. While these areas are no longer used for navigation, they are enjoyed recreationally by many in the surrounding communities.
The local history of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania is full of interesting stories about the intrepid souls who settled there, building the first towns and industries of the region. This is a well-researched and superbly composed chronicle which traverses various aspects of Schuylkill life. It begins with a profile of the German settlers who were the majority group who established themselves in areas of Penn State during the mid-1700s. We continue onto accounts of the initial settlements; essential matters include agriculture and an effective defense from aggressive Native American tribes. To better place the reader character profiles are given, describing certain people and the environs that surrounded them. As the decades went by, hamlets and villages grew into towns such as Pottsville. New industries were born and developed rapidly as the population burgeoned. The discovery of coal plus the advent of steam engines and the railroad led the economy of Schuylkill to prosperity. Churches were built to keep the locals mindful of the Lord, and schools were set up to educate the new generations. Amid all this activity, many intriguing stories and events ensued - together, these bring alive a distant era of grit, determination and hardiness.