Before the railroad and the whitewater rafting industry, commerce on the New River depended on long, flat-bottomed boats called batteaux. The river served as an important travel corridor through the Appalachian Mountains, and its watershed helped bridge the Eastern Continental Divide and the Mississippi River by linking the James River’s Atlantic watershed with the Kanawha and Ohio Rivers. From the nation’s earliest days, George Washington envisioned a cross-country canal route along this pathway. Beginning in the mid-1800s, the Army Corps of Engineers blasted sluice channels through ledges and rapids on the New and Greenbrier Rivers to support commercial batteau traffic. Crews moved the boats through shallow water by pushing long poles along their sides and steering with long sweeping rudders at each end, carrying lumber, agricultural produce, and mercantile products. Washington’s dream of a southern Chesapeake and Ohio Canal failed because the Lower New River Gorge’s whitewater rapids were too wild for batteau navigation. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, built with the help of supplies carried by batteaux, finally connected the watersheds in 1872.