Chaos in the 2nd city..........a play at DC's Wolly Mamooth theater...........





I am not a mechanical engineer..................but a rushing river...............could create chaos.......look at New Orleans............flooding causes more deaths than does the wind of a hurricane....................and what is holding the Tiber river...............back.............that once was Constitution ave....................????????

Baltimore’s Locks on the Ohio & Erie Canal

As part of the national government’s goals to improve transportation, save Ohio farmers, and encourage buckeye population, on July 4, 1825, state officials conducted groundbreaking ceremonies for the Ohio & Erie Canal on the Licking Summit just south of Newark.

Ohio & Erie Canal and Dry Dock Lock

Those towns that were fortunate enough to be on the surveyed route of the 40-foot wide (at the top) ditch between Cleveland and Portsmouth anxiously awaited construction. Every “canawler” would be a potential customer and business opportunities would abound at every lock where passengers disembarked for the 15-minute “lock through.”

In March of that same year two small villages, separated by the Pawpaw Creek Valley, dedicated their first official plats of ground in preparation for the boom that would arrive as soon as the gates opened allowing water from the Licking Reservoir (Buckeye Lake) to fill the canal.

Bibler Lock on the Ohio & Erie Canal

The construction of eight locks (90′ x 15′ sandstone chambers that served as water elevators) in this area added to the commercial excitement. A towboy walked his mules down the towpath for the first time in October of 1831. The canal would add fuel to a rivalry between New Market (Virginia settlement east of Pawpaw that became Baltimore in 1833) and Basil (Swiss settlement west of Pawpaw) that would officially last until the end of WWII when both sides of Pawpaw became Baltimore.

Though the “Golden Era” of the canal would be over by the 1850’s, its cultural impact would stretch well into the twentieth century. Consequently, Baltimore, like many other O & E Canal communities on the 310-mile ditch owes much of its heritage to the “silver ribbon” that brought people, prosperity, and progress. The locks stand as eyewitnesses to an unforgettable episode in the story of our community.