Cumberland Terminus: Yesterday and Today

Independence Day, July 4, 1828, marked an important day for Cumberland, Maryland, as the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad both broke ground far to the east in a race to reach the Ohio River and win markets for coal, lumber, and farm goods. The canal followed the Potomac River for 184.5 miles, gaining 605 feet in elevation from Georgetown to Cumberland, on its way toward Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The railroad reached Cumberland eight years before the canal, which finally arrived in 1850. Defeated by the railroad and financially worn down by floods, the canal closed in 1924. Although it never connected with the Ohio River, it provided an outlet for local products and labor for 74 years and helped build Cumberland into Maryland's second-largest city after Baltimore. Coal from the surrounding mountains traveled by rail to meet canal boats at Cumberland, where boatmen towed it downstream to Georgetown in about a week, and many residents found work building and repairing boats or at Footer's Dye Works.

Cumberland, Maryland · United States