Rethinking the C&O Canal
The old saying goes, “You can’t fit a square peg in a round hole.” Yet for more than 90 years, historians have said that somehow 92-foot-long canal boats on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal fit into locks that could hold boats no larger than 90 feet and probably less. It’s just one of the many questions that modern researchers are finding need to be answered about the C&O Canal. Some have easy answers that go against the accepted history of the canal. Others, like the question of canal-boat length, are still being researched. Both have historians and National Park Service staff rethinking how the C&O Canal operated. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal ended business operations in 1924. Since then, books have been written about the canal, historians have researched the lives of canallers and lock tenders, and the National Park Read more…
The engineering marvel hidden under a mountain
On the day that construction began on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal on July 4, 1828, the pressure was on the work crews to get dig the 184.5-mile-long ditch to Cumberland as quickly as possible. Why the rush? The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad broke ground in Baltimore for its construction began on the same day and Cumberland was the prize for both the canal and railroad. The C&O Canal crews worked hard digging the canal and building 160 culverts, 74 lift locks, and 11 aqueducts. However, the canal has only one tunnel—the Paw Paw Tunnel—and it was a major reason why the B&O Railroad beat the C&O Canal to Cumberland by eight years. Construction When planning out the route of the C&O Canal, it could have continued to follow the Potomac River through southeastern Allegany County, weaving along the Paw Paw Read more…
Get the "Between Rail and River" e-book FREE Jan. 22-24
To celebrate Canawlers coming back into print in paperback, I’m offering the second book in the Canawlers series, Between Rail and River, for free on you Kindle from Jan. 22-24. Between Rail and River picks up where Canawlers ends. As the Fitzgerald family struggles to make it through the winter of 1862-1863 and what has been a poor boating year on the C&O Canal, the Civil War is drawing ever closer to being fought aboard the Freeman. George Fitzgerald’s unexpected return from the war pits him against David Windover, an ex-Confederate spy, who now works and lives with the Fitzgeralds. Alice Fitzgerald struggles to hold her family together as a vindictive sheriff and a haughty doctor’s wife work to tear them apart. Tony, the street urchin from Cumberland, has found a life aboard the Freeman, but Sheriff Lee Whittaker has Read more…
"Canawlers" back in print!
It’s been a couple years since I allowed Canawlers to go out of print. I still kept getting requests from bookstores and some individual buyers to get copies, though. I went back and forth about it, but since I’m hoping to bring the third book in the trilogy out around Christmas time, I figured I would need to have the first book available, too. So I gave in and brought the book back in print. It is available today and it is still only $17.95. You can order a copy from Amazon and if it’s not in your favorite bookstore yet, they should probably be able to order it. Canawlers is a family saga set on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal during the Civil War. Hugh Fitzgerald proudly calls himself a “canawler.” He works on the C&O Canal transporting coal Read more…
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