Canal Walk / Historic Canals

One hundred and fifty years ago, Richmond’s waterfront bustled with business and trade, workers and travelers, hotels, saloons, and tobacco warehouses, while along the canals barges were towed by teams of horses and mules, batteaux carrying freight plied the river and the canal around the rapids, and passenger boats called packets left for Lynchburg every other day. Along Richmond’s riverfront are sites of millennia-old Indian trade routes and early Colonial settlements, restored Tredegar Iron Works buildings, remains of bridges burned when the Confederates evacuated the city, and traces left by tobacco warehouses, electric trolleys, and an early African American church. First envisioned by George Washington in 1774 as part of a continuous transportation route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River, the canals around the falls west of downtown were initially constructed by 1789 by the James River Canal Company, later formed part of the James River and Kanawha Canal system, entered the city from the west behind the Tredegar Iron Works to a basin between 8th and 11th Streets, and connected by the Tidewater Connection Locks to the Richmond Dock. Also completed by 1789 was a millrace later known as the Haxall Canal, initially dug to power a local flour mill. The canal system eventually extended as far west as Buchanan, Virginia, but railroads rather than canals fulfilled Washington’s dream, and soon after the Civil War rail lines were laid over the old canal towpaths, causing 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, allowing boats once again to bypass the falls of the James River and creating a pedestrian route through Richmond’s riverfront district and four centuries of history.

Richmond, Virginia · United States