In 1976, Charles Howard Hiester donated his unique private collection of canal memorabilia to Berks County. Howard was a fourth generation canalman who grew up in his grandfather's boatyard at the foot of 6th Street in Reading, Pennsylvania. In 1986, the Canal Center opened to help preserve the history of the Union Canal and the Schuylkill Navigation System. Berks County had two major water transportation facilities when inland travel was still in its infancy and walking, horseback, and stagecoach travel were unreliable and uncomfortable. The Schuylkill Navigation System, a 108-mile combination of canals and slackwater pools, connected Port Carbon to Philadelphia and provided convenient and economical transportation of people and goods from 1825 to 1919. It carried more coal than any other water transportation system in America, but the speed and efficiency of the railroad, along with heavy silting of the channel, caused its decline. The Union Canal, originally conceived by William Penn to connect the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Rivers, was completed in 1827. The total system covered 80 miles from Reading to Middletown, plus a branch to Pine Grove, and a trip on it took 5 to 7 days. It carried mostly bulk cargo from farms, forests, mines, and quarries. Never a financial success, it ultimately failed because of its narrowness and leakage problems and closed in 1884. The Union Canal passed directly behind the Canal Center, where a remnant of the canal can still be seen, and the Canal Center is housed in a 94-foot by 50-foot former dairy barn built in 1947 to replace an original 19th-century bank barn destroyed by fire.