Small settlements grew up around the canal, with many inhabitants either working for the canal company or providing goods and services to local boatmen and their passengers. An 1898 survey of the area listed five existing buildings at Lock 15: a lock tender's home, a hotel with an outbuilding, a barn, and a shoemaker's shop. The building materials and house types at Lock 15 are not known, but some early buildings may have been constructed of logs made available when land for the canal was cleared. Little is known about the individuals who lived and worked along the canal, but the 1850 Census for Lower Chanceford Township, York County, where eight locks of the Susquehanna Canal were located, listed eight lock tenders as residents of the area. Patrick Cook, an Irishman who served as canal supervisor and later as division supervisor, appears in four consecutive censuses, suggesting a long-term commitment to the canal by at least some employees. Lock tenders continued to be listed in the census until 1900, when persons formerly listed as lock tenders were identified as laborers. Some canal-oriented entrepreneurs and workers apparently continued to live in the canal area even after canal operations ceased in 1894.