After a few false starts, the Schuylkill Navigation Company was chartered by the state legislature on March 8, 1815, to make lock navigation on the Schuylkill River. The 106-mile slackwater canal between Philadelphia and Pottsville was completed by June 1825, using timber crib dams filled with stone along with stretches of dug canal. From 1825 to 1842 the canal enjoyed a coal freight monopoly until competing railroads were built. In response, managers raised water levels by replacing dams and enlarged locks for larger canal boats, then after improvements in 1845 and 1846 and rebuilding after a flood in 1850, the company entered its second most prosperous period from 1855 to 1867 while operated by the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, which eliminated competition and fixed prices to ensure profits. Because of river silting, sections closed and shipments gradually declined, ending after abandonment in 1916. Ritz's Lock was one of 120 locks built to move barges over 600 feet in elevation between Pottsville and Philadelphia. Also called Felix's, Rothermel's, or Lock #42, it was built in 1855 of native limestone capped and trimmed with sandstone, replacing an 1823 lock, and later had concrete added to both ends in the early 1950s to enable dredging of coal silt. Its simple operation used water power and a canal tender working heavily timbered gates with a balance beam; upstream passage took about 15 minutes. The lock was operated for many years by the Ritz family. Eva Ritz arrived there in 1911 with her husband, Floyd W.S. Ritz, while her father-in-law George P. Ritz served as locktender, and she helped open the gates, baked bread for neighbors and boatmen, and lived with the constant flooding risk of the nearby locktender house. After canal operations ceased, the family remained in the house rent-free for 20 more years with the railroad's permission.
