Canal Walk / Historic Canals

First envisioned by George Washington in 1774 as part of a continuous transportation route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River, Richmond’s canals began taking shape by 1789, when the James River Canal Company completed initial portions around the falls west of downtown. As part of the James River and Kanawha Canal system, the canal entered the city from the west, passed behind the Tredegar Iron Works, and ran to a basin between 8th and 11th Streets, where the Tidewater Connection Locks linked it to the Richmond Dock. A millrace completed by 1789, later known as the Haxall Canal, was first dug to power a local flour mill. The canal system eventually reached as far west as Buchanan, Virginia, and one hundred and fifty years ago Richmond’s waterfront was crowded with trade, workers, travelers, hotels, saloons, and tobacco warehouses, while horses and mules towed barges along the canals, batteaux carried freight on the river and canal around the rapids, and passenger packets departed for Lynchburg every other day. Railroads, rather than canals, ultimately fulfilled Washington’s vision, and soon after the Civil War rail lines were laid over the old canal towpaths, causing nearly all of these waterways to disappear from the city except for two locks preserved at the bottom of 12th Street. In 1995, public and private partners restored a portion of the original canals and created a new riverfront district, where boats can again bypass the falls of the James River and where a pedestrian path passes sites tied to millennia-old Indian trade routes, early Colonial settlements, restored Tredegar Iron Works buildings, remains of bridges burned when the Confederates evacuated the city, tobacco warehouses, electric trolleys, and an early African American church.

Richmond, Virginia · United States