The Walhonding Canal was a 25-mile feeder canal connected to the 305-mile Ohio-Erie Canal, which ran from Cleveland to Portsmouth. The lock here is on the Walhonding Canal, and this site contains the only triple lock on the entire system. Canal boats were operated by captains and their families, with the captain’s wife serving as cook, a “Hoagie” caring for the mules, and children helping on privately owned boats; extra mules were hauled along the way, while state boats had stables along the towpath and could carry more tonnage. Boats traveled at a speed limit of four miles an hour because wakes would damage the sides of the towpath, and canal travel was limited to non-freezing months as well as by speed and tonnage restrictions. The canal system was used from 1840 to 1913, and after the flood of 1913 damaged the entire system beyond repair, this section of the Walhonding Canal continued to supply water to a hydro-electric plant at Roscoe into the 1950s. Lee’s Empire Mill once stood where the lower parking lot is now, and the stone wall was its foundation. Floods and competition from the railroad brought about the canal system’s decline; rail service could run 55 miles per hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The first locomotive to reach Coshocton County arrived disassembled on a canal boat; it was a narrow gauge locomotive called the “Mohammed,” and a later standard gauge rail system ended the canal era before the Mohammed was shipped to Texas. The canal itself was hand-built with wheelbarrow and shovel, and sometimes with drag lines using a pan pulled by horses.