Bellows Falls Canal
canal in the United States of America
Bellows Falls Canal is a canal constructed to allow boat traffic to bypass Great Falls on the Connecticut River in Bellows Falls, Vermont. It was constructed by the Bellows Falls Canal Company and was one of the first canals in the United States. It was used for transport, to power mills, and later for hydroelectric power. The Bellows Falls Downtown Historic District includes the canal.
The Library of Congress has a dry plate negative of the canal from 1907. A historical marker on Bridge Street in Bellows Falls, Vermont commemorates the canal's history.
History
A British-owned company was chartered to make the Connecticut River navigable in 1791 and spent 10 years building nine locks and a dam to bypass 52-foot-high (16 m) Great Falls. The canal was completed in 1802. Although it was planned and built for river transportation, by the time it opened in 1802 there was already at least one mill using the canal for water power, with more built soon after.
Usage declined with the arrival of railroad service in the area in 1849, and the canal ceased to carry boat traffic in 1858.
The public source identifies “Bellows Falls Canal” as canal in the United States of America. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bellows, Falls and Canal.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bellows Falls Canal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.