Roscoe Village
An 1800's Canal Town
Coshocton, OH
July 9th, 2007
History
can sometimes be grouped into "ages", such as the age of steam or the
industrial age. Ohio and Pennsylvania shared the age of the canal.
The early 1800s saw the completion of the Erie Canal. A marvel in engineering,
this watery highway quickly proved its economic value and became the envy of
states around it. Ohio, which became a state in 1803 was seriously lacking in
usable roads. That state's legislators decided that the most economical
and quickest way to open up the state to trade was to build canals. The
first of the Ohio canals, Ohio and Erie Canal, connected Lake Erie with the Ohio
River at Portsmouth in the east, and opened in 1832. A second canal, the
Miami and Erie Canal connected Lake Erie at Toledo with the Ohio River at
Cincinnati. in 1840. 
With additional branches and feeders, Ohio would end
up with over 1000 miles of canals, more than any other state or country in the
world. The Canals were built with 1/2 mile contracts issued by the State,
in many cases to the local farmers who owned the land on which the canal was to
be built. Contractors were responsible for all aspects of the work.
They did the hiring, paid the workers as well as housed and fed those who
actually dug the canal. As most of the land that the canal would pass
through was primitive, the work was hard and dangerous. Generally they
worked from sun up to sun down, 6 days a week, for about 30 cents a day.
They slept on the floor of group huts and ate whatever could be caught locally,
backed up by dry stock hauled in by cart or carried in by hand. Harsh
conditions, poor diet and insects, along with close living, caused sickness to
run rampant though many crews. Even before the first shovel of dirt was
turned, 
the land had to be prepared. After surveyors had set the course
and the ground had thawed, woodsmen with axes move in and chop down the trees
and pull the stumps. Any rocks in the way had to be broken up with hammer and
spike, then dragged out of the way. The final preparation was to run a
harrow over the path to remove roots, thus speeding up the digging. It is
amazing that with all that had to be done, on an average, it took only 4½ days to complete a mile of canal. The next problem that the builders
had to solve was that Ohio is built in a kind of convex shape, being higher in
the middle then on either the North or South end. This meant that the
water needed to flood the canals would have to come from the middle of the
state. The answer was to expand several lakes and swamps in the
Akron and Newark area. The final obstacle was to build some 250 locks to
raise and lower the water. The Canals were specified to be a minimum of 40
feet wide at water level and 26 feet wide at the bottom, a depth of just 4
feet. The 
locks' walls were made of sandstone cut from quarries in
Ohio. The bottom of the locks were lined with either hand hewed hardwood
or white oak planks. As the canals became functional, dry goods could make
it to the interior of the state and farm goods could make it out. At the
exchange points, Canal towns sprung up. Roscoe Village was one of those
towns. Canal traffic peaked between 1830 and 1860. However, the Civil War
brought to the State an even better mode of transportation, and the age of the
Train began. The canals continued to function for many years as they slowly
declined until the flood of 1913 washed out several locks, causing the entire
canal system to shut down. Today there are still some 70 miles of canals
channeling water for irrigation and a very small portion such as the canal at
Roscoe Village still operate a canal boat pulled by horses, carrying tourists
instead of coal and whiskey.