C&O Canal - Lock #6 - Waterway Locks, Planes and Lifts on Waymarking.com

Magazine Lock

This is the sixth lock, heading west, in the Chesapeake and Ohio canal system. It is located in Montgomery County, Maryland and is known as the Magazine Lock. This lock is reached from the southbound Clara Barton Parkway. It is the second lock in Maryland, at approximately milepost 5.3 on the canal.

To visit Lock #6, you can park right at the lock off of the Clara Barton Parkway. This lock is easily visited in conjunction with Lock #5, as it is only a 5-10 minute walk along the towpath between the two.

In the heyday of the canal, locktenders lived onsite at the locks and tended them 24 hours a day. The original lockhouse that the locktender of Lock #6 lived in is still here at Lock #6. In fact, this lockhouse is still in use today as a private residence. If you visit this waymark, please be aware that while the canal and the towpath are public property, the lockhouse and the path to it are private property. Please respect (and perhaps envy) the lockhouse owners. This location is very near where President Adams first broke ground for the canal in 1828.

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The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal runs 184.5 miles from Georgetown in Washington, DC to Cumberland, Maryland, paralleling the largely unnavigable Potomac River. Originally conceived by George Washington, the intent of the canal was to open shipping to the coal-rich area of Western Maryland, West Virginia and Western Pennsylvania, with the original intention of linking to the Ohio River in Pittsburgh.

Construction of the canal began on July 4, 1828, the same day that ground was broken for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in Baltimore, Maryland. By the time the canal reached Cumberland in 1850 it was many years behind schedule and tens of millions of dollars over budget. Although profitable for a brief period during the mid-19th century, as a commercial venture, the canal was doomed by the success of the railroad and operation of the canal was discontinued in 1924 following a catastrophic flood.

In 1938, the federal government acquired the canal land from the then-owner, the B&O Railroad with the intention of converting the canal and towpath into a highway, an idea that persisted well into the 1950's. Supreme Court Justice William Douglas campaigned for the preservation of the land and garnered much publicity by walking the entire towpath in March of 1954 eventually leading to the abandonment of the highway plan. The entire 184.5 miles of canal land were made into a National Historical Park by President Nixon in 1971.

For more information on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, visit www.candocanal.org

Waterway Name: Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Connected Points: Georgetown, DC to Cumberland, Maryland Type: Lock Date Opened: 09/01/1831 Date Closed (if applicable): 03/29/1924 Elevation Difference (meters): 3.00 Site Status: Inactive Web Site: [Web Link]

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Date Logged Log User Rating   08/09/2013 Searcher28 visited it