Canal Walk / Historic Canals

One hundred and fifty years ago, Richmond’s waterfront bustled with business and trade, with workers and travelers, hotels, saloons, and tobacco warehouses lining the area. Along the canals, barges were towed by teams of horses and mules, batteaux carrying freight traveled the river and the canal around the rapids, and passenger boats called packets left for Lynchburg every other day. Along this riverfront are sites of millennia-old Indian trade routes, early Colonial settlements, restored Tredegar Iron Works buildings, remains of bridges burned when the Confederates evacuated the city, and traces of tobacco warehouses, electric trolleys, and an early African American church. First envisioned by George Washington in 1774 as part of a continuous transportation route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River, the canals around Richmond’s falls were begun by the James River Canal Company, with initial portions completed by 1789. As part of the James River and Kanawha Canal system, the canal entered the city from the west, ran behind the Tredegar Iron Works to a basin between 8th and 11th Streets, and connected by a series of locks known as the Tidewater Connection Locks to the Richmond Dock. A millrace later known as the Haxall Canal, initially dug to power a local flour mill, was also completed by 1789. The canal system eventually extended as far west as Buchanan, Virginia, but railroads rather than canals ultimately fulfilled Washington’s dream and brought about the canals’ end. Soon after the Civil War, rail lines were laid over the old canal towpaths, and except for two locks preserved at the bottom of 12th Street, the waterways disappeared from the city until 1995, when public and private partners restored a portion of the original canals and created the riverfront district enjoyed today.

Richmond, Virginia · United States