The longest canal in France is the Canal du Midi. Here at Languedoc. Note the three canal boats on the left bank. All three are lined up with their bows pointing in the same direction. In the distance, an arch bridge for vehicles of all types. The sidewalk on the right could have been a towpath in [...]
Category: Canals
Author leads tour on the Intracoastal (without leaving the hotel)
Last year, I led my first tour on the Intracoastal Waterway about this time of year while aboard the ubiquitous WaterTaxi in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The participants were Road Scholars, a program devised by the Cambridge, Mass., non-profit organization that launched ElderHostel some years ago, today a worldwide lifetime learning program. Participants ranged in age [...]
Before eminent domain: the writ of ad quod damnum
Florida did not become a state until 1845. In the Treaty with Spain in 1819, the East and West Floridas would become the Territory of Florida under federal jurisdiction in 1821 until the "territory" became a "state" under the United States Constitution. Most of the meager population inhabited the extreme northern portion of the territory. [...]
Cape Canaveral Light
Cape Canaveral Lighthouse.
Commercial Acetylene Gas Generator, ca. 1905
In the short period of time between kerosene or oil lamps and electricity, many cities, towns, and villages, hotels and businesses throughout America relied upon the often dangerous acetylene gas generator. Such also was the case for canal dredges and excavators running day and night, twenty-four hours a day. The generators mixed calcium carbide and [...]
The Falkirk Wheel of Central Scotland: reconnecting Glasgow and Edinburgh
http://youtu.be/_tBH9SE-Kw8 Designed by Scottish architect Tony Kettle, the Falkirkwheel is one of the most unusually designed rotating boat lifts and systems in the world. Employing Archimedes principle and a 22-horsepower motor, the wheel lifts narrow or canal boats a distance of 79 feet from the Forth and Clyde Canal to the Union Canal. Opening in [...]
President Theodore Roosevelt operating a Dredge in the Culebra Cut of the Panama Canal
The Culebra Cut was the most difficult of all the dredging operations in the digging of the Panama Canal. Capt. David Gaillard, of French Hugenot ancestry, was chief of dredging operations at the Cut and a cousin of Henry Gaillard. Henry had been one of the four original incorporators of the Florida canal company, the [...]
The Haulover Canal at Titusville (not Baker’s Haulover in Miami-Dade County)
In 1852, Lieutenant Horatio Governeur Wright led the the Corps of Engineers in the second inland waterway Renaissance. Wright supervised the construction of the first Haulover Canal lined with wood, two feet deep and twelve feet wide at a cost established by Congress at $1,200. Although the amount seems minuscule today, it represented a breakthrough [...]
The Erie Canal at Lockport, New York (1817-1825)
The construction of the wildly successful Erie Canal in the State of New York set off a new era of canal construction across America. For the first time, an inland waterway provided a connection between New York City on the Atlantic coast and cities along the shores of the Great Lakes like Chicago. The link [...]
Florida’s Big Dig 