Smiths Falls developed around a flight of 3 locks built to overcome rapids with a total fall of over 7 metres (20 feet) on the Rideau Canal, each lock raising vessels part of the way like a stairway. Construction was harder than Colonel By had expected because cracks were found in the stone walls of the basin leading to a single lock a quarter mile upstream, and repairs pushed the cost of the station to £36,000, more than twice the original estimate. Between 1826 and 1832, an old Indian canoe route along the Rideau and Cataraqui Rivers was transformed by order of the British government into the 202 km (126 miles) Rideau Canal, designed by the Royal Engineers under Lieutenant Colonel John By and built by local contractors to give the British army a safer inland supply route than the exposed St. Lawrence after the War of 1812. Made navigable by 47 locks in 22 stations with dams and weirs, the waterway was protected by blockhouses but served a peaceful role, carrying settlers and supplies into the interior until the middle of the 19th century, then passing to the colonial government of Canada in 1856 as the danger of war with the United States receded. Smiths Falls itself became a busy industrial centre in the 19th century, with flour, shingle and sawmills, foundries, and the long-lived Frost & Wood Manufacturing Company producing farm machinery, and it remained an important transportation junction, with coal barges still coming up from Kingston for the railways in the early 20th century. After local commercial traffic declined with the automobile and better roads around World War I, recreational boating grew steadily, and the Rideau system became busier than ever in its second century.