William Henry Harrison, later the ninth president of the United States, strongly supported the Cincinnati & Whitewater Canal project as a major stock subscriber, sold land from his North Bend farm for the canal and tunnel right-of-way, and provided clay and cordwood for making bricks for the tunnel. On March 31, 1836, the steamer Moselle carried passengers from Cincinnati to Harrison's farm for the canal groundbreaking ceremonies. After Harrison's death in 1841, he was buried in a tomb on the hill a few hundred feet above the North Bend portal of the tunnel. In 1837, Cincinnati merchants planned a branch canal to connect with the Whitewater Canal at West Harrison, Indiana, to draw commerce from Indiana's Whitewater Valley. The chief obstacle was the ridge between North Bend and Cleves, just northeast of the site, and engineer Darius Lapham designed a 1,782-foot tunnel through it. Lined with brick made on site, the tunnel was 24 feet wide and 20 1/2 feet high, the first canal tunnel in Ohio, and six workers died building it. The Cincinnati & Whitewater Canal opened in 1843 but was abandoned by 1856 after repeated flooding made the main Whitewater Canal useless. The tunnel was later used as a railroad tunnel from 1863 until 1888, reflecting the progression of transportation technology in the mid-nineteenth century.
