From the late 1600s onward, the rich forests and fields south of the Elizabeth River and in northeastern North Carolina produced shingles, naval stores, lumber, grain, and tobacco that moved north to market across causeways and bridges. In the 1700s, the Great Road carried supplies from North Carolina to Great Bridge for shipment to Norfolk, and the patriot victory at the Battle of Great Bridge on December 9, 1775, secured that route for the colonists, drove the British out of Norfolk, and helped make Virginia a major supplier of food and naval stores for American forces throughout the Revolution. After the Revolutionary War, commerce required a quicker water passage, leading to the hand-dug Dismal Swamp Canal, which opened to flat boats in 1805 but later proved too shallow for the steam engines of the mid 1800s, and then to the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal, completed in 1859 by steam dredges through cypress swamps and cutting the battlefield in two. In the 1900s, improved transportation helped the area become a major supplier of truck farming products, while World War I established Norfolk and Portsmouth as major naval ports and World War II brought still greater military expansion. Today, the canals remain an inland water route for commercial vessels and pleasure craft, and Great Bridge remains a modern center of activity that still bears traces of its rise from the tidal marshes of the 1600s.