Stone Remnant of the
C&O Canal

Our job was to get the 1973 steel exoskeleton off and restore the Aqueduct.

George Washington, himself, advocated "a flatwater route to western wealth,” the Patowmack River made navigable with skirting canals. In 1828 President John Quincy Adams turned the first shovelful of dirt for a canal to connect the Potomac and Ohio Rivers.

The Chesapeake and Ohio canal route hugged the river, water from the river maintaining the canal’s four mph flow. This meant the canal had to cross the waterways entering the river: eleven aqueducts carried the canal over substantial rivers and streams with another 150 culverts across smaller creeks.

The Monocacy River aqueduct, completed in 1833, crossed that river. It has been called “possibly the most beautiful structure on the canal” and, indeed, is used as the poster aqueduct in many Maryland and Frederick County promotional publications.