Along what is now Arlington Road, three sets of double locks on the Old Middlesex Canal once raised canal boats and rafts from Boston fifty feet on their way northward to Lowell. The 80 foot by 11 foot chambers included a middle set separated from the other two by wide basins used to refill the locks after locking through. Because passage through the locks was time consuming, boatmen and passengers frequented four canal taverns, bowling alleys, and a dance pavilion here, making it one of the country’s earliest resort areas. From 1793 to 1853, at this location, horse-drawn canal boats carried freight and passengers between Boston and the Merrimack River at Lowell before the days of railroads. The canal ran from Charlestown through what is now Somerville, Medford, Winchester, Woburn, Wilmington, Billerica, and Chelmsford to Lowell. It was just over 27 miles long, 20 feet wide at the bottom, 30 1/2 feet wide at the surface, and 3 1/2 feet deep, with 20 locks, 8 aqueducts, and 50 bridges.