The Roanoke Canal Museum and Trail preserves the history of transportation and engineering on the Roanoke River from the early 1800s to today through a 7 1/2 mile indoor and outdoor route linking Roanoke Rapids and Weldon, North Carolina. Surviving features include portions of the 39 foot wide canal channel, its 10 foot wide towpath, the original aqueduct, one stone culvert, and locks, while the canal, towpath, and structures were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. The canal and trail reflect early American ingenuity, canal transportation, and daily life in the Roanoke Valley, and later development included a power house built in the early 1900s at the upper middle locks that generated the region's first hydroelectricity and now houses the museum. Along the route are historic and natural features including the Spans Branch Culvert, Rochelle Pond, remains of the wider and deeper power canal, locks near the museum and Kraft paper mill, a stone surge-control structure, a spillway, a pond created by gravel harvesting, and the early 1800s aqueduct over Chockoyette Creek. Weldon became a major railroad hub on the Wilmington-Weldon Railroad and was known as the lifeline of the Confederacy, with old trestle remnants and a Confederate graveyard near the aqueduct. At River Falls Park, the canal once ended in a basin before entering the river east of the rapids; repeated floods caused wooden locks there to fail, but canal water later powered grist mills, an iron foundry, two cotton gins, and a large corn mill built in 1890 that still stands.