The Roanoke Navigation Company, a collaboration among North Carolina, Virginia, and private shareholders, began building the Roanoke Canal in 1819 to create an inland navigation system from the upper Staunton and Dan Rivers in Virginia, down the Roanoke River through North Carolina, and then by way of the Dismal Swamp Canal to Norfolk. Construction of the 8.5-mile canal around the Great Falls of the Roanoke to the terminus of the project in present-day Weldon, using mostly slave labor, took several years and included locks at three locations and an aqueduct over Chokoyotte Creek in Weldon. Canal boats, or batteaux, were about 60 feet long with an 8-foot beam, were often poled by free blacks and slaves, and each carried 10 to 12 hogsheads, or 5 to 8 tons, of cargo. The canal operated until 1859, when railroads forced its closure, but Weldon's rise as a transportation center by 1861 and the critical need to move troops and supplies for the Southern war effort brought renewed use of the canal to carry regional farm products to Weldon's rail junctions for Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Although Union forces destroyed ports, railroads, and bridges throughout the South, the Roanoke Canal remained in service until the end of the war, and the navigation company continued through the Reconstruction era until it ceased operations in 1875.