In the late 1700s, a stone wall here was built as part of George Washington's Patowmack Canal, specifically a section of the Seneca Bypass that enabled boatmen to skirt Seneca Falls. Washington pursued the canal tirelessly to make the Potomac River navigable, hoping it would become a great avenue into the Western Country and eventually bring commerce to the Atlantic seaboard from the Ohio country and points west, where few men had yet ventured. Although the canal company went bankrupt and Washington died two years before his canal system was finished in 1802, he had succeeded in making the Potomac navigable, if only for a time.