Dutch Gap Canal is a man-made shortcut on Virginia’s James River, cut across the narrow neck beside Farrar's Island where the river once looped in the Seven Mile Loop near the early colonial site of Henricus, founded in 1611 by Sir Thomas Dale. Begun in late August 1864 on Major General Benjamin Butler’s orders, it was intended to let Union vessels bypass Confederate guns during the Petersburg Campaign, but heavy fire, difficult labor, and a failed explosion kept it from serving armed ships before the war ended. Much of the digging was done by United States Colored Troops and other African-American laborers. After the war it was improved into a working navigation channel and later gained scientific importance for exposed Cretaceous fossils.