C&D Canal

Today as we head to Philly, we will begin our travel on the 14-mile long Chesapeake and Delaware Canal which crosses the northern Delaware/Maryland peninsula. Its eastern mouth is on the Delaware River and its western mouth the on Chesapeake Bay at Chesapeake, Maryland. Logically, the name of the canal reflects the names of the two water bodies that it connects. The C&D Canal provides a shortcut of about 300 miles for ship traffic between the Port of Baltimore and northeastern US cities and Europe.



It is one of the few fully sea-level shipping canals in the world. The original C & D Canal was built privately and opened for business in 1829. The depth of the water was 10 feet, had four locks and it carried barges and sailing vessels that were towed by teams of mules from the shore. The canal was purchased by the US Government in 1919 and the canal was excavated and deepened to create a sea-level facility with a channel 12 feet deep and 90 feet wide. The new canal configuration eliminated the locks and was completed in 1927.


In order to be adequately accommodate two ocean going vessels traveling in opposite directions, the canal underwent another expansion during the mid 1970s. At this time the channel depth increased to 35 feet and the channel width was increased to 450 feet.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the C&D C canal is designated as a National Historic Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering landmark. The Canal is the only major commercial canal in the US that is still in use among those which were built during the heyday of canal building in the early 1800s.