america's past. and our new series, real america featuring educational films from the 19 30's through the 1970's. c-span 3 created by the cable tv industry and funded by your local cable or satellite provider. watch us in hd, like us on facebook, on follow us on twitter. announcer: each week, american history tv's american artifacts visits museums and historic places. next, we travel about 15 miles northwest of washington dc to great falls 10 visitors center where we will take a boat ride to learn about the history of the chesapeake and ohio canal. '[[[horn blows] announcer: i would like to introduce myself. my name is cassandra. and i am a seasonal park ranger at the chesapeake and ohio canal. i think we are going to cast off here shortly.

i'll give you a brief history of the canal. it's the chesapeake and ohio canal. does not reached to the chesapeake bay or go up to the ohio river, which was the intention of the canal when we started billing it in july 1828. we wanted to try to connect the eastern shore with what was considered the west back then. the west was ohio and pennsylvania, that area. we wanted to connect pittsburgh to the chesapeake bay. the eakpeak of the canal and the 1870's, if you were waiting at a loch, in 30 minutes there were 15 or 20 boats waiting.

it was not a very reliable usage. a did not actually have a long time use. it was kind of broken. did not work very well. so we went ahead and took his dream and build a canal next to the potomac river so we could use that water source but have something that is more controlled and reliable compared to the potomac river, because you took a boat over the falls you would not last very long. we'll use this canal and ran it from georgetown all the way up to cumberland. we kind of ran into some problems also known as the appellations. we did not take that into consideration when we were building the canal itself. so we kind of not stuck going to the mountains or trying to go around them. this canal is 184 miles long. throughout that, there are 74 lift locks. we are going to go through one of them today. that is locked 20.

what they do, there is a very big elevation difference between georgetown and cumberland. as you can tell, georgetown is at or below sea level. where cumberland is along the edge of the appalachian mountains. it is about a 600 elevation foot difference. so what these walks do is they help us control that difference so that we are able to go both ways instead of dust having one big river rushing downstream. and only being able to transport goods from cumberland to georgetown. we have our bows in in the front. we do things differently. what he is going to do as he has a tow line that is connected to the lock itself. he's going to take that line and start pulling that in, so we can pull tathat line in. he is going to go ahead and start pulling us in. back then, they would have their mules connected to their boats.

mules would be walking on the path and they would be the ones that would pull us in. we would not have the crew members doing that work. once we were completely inside the lock, we would close the two downstream dates. and what that allows us to do is that allows us to make a sealed tight area so no water can exit so we can raise water in that area. this system was actually created gyby man way past our time. his name was leonardo da vinci. he created a lot of things -- unfortunately a lot of them did not work for it but this was something we decided was a really good idea. we did a few modifications to has drawn he had in his sketchbook. but most of it is all the same. and so what happens is this is one side of our lock door. with our lock door, there are

two doors on the bottom. they are called wicked. theesese wickets are connected to stems. we need a key to open our lock. we take a key and put in top of our stem. we turn the doors so it lets the water from upstream downstream. we open the wicket doors. i did say every lock needs a key . this was a key found in the bottom of the canal. we found that when we took over the national park. it's made out of cast-iron. it is about 10 to 15 pounds. pretty heavy. and this is what our lock keepers would carry around all day. i'm going to stop talking

because it is really hard to yell over the rushing water, ok? [water rushing] this part actually right here is the slowest part of the lock because the water is actually almost equaling out. so it is not rushing in like you saw when we first opened the doors. it takes longer for that water to equal out. once everything is equaled out we also have to open up those gates. then that's when we start

moving. you would have lock keepers that we do that with the wicket doors. they would be in charge of opening up those doors and everything like that. our locks keepers were always in charge of that, and they would live in lock houses, kind of like the one that is to my right. all right? the only difference about this lockh ouse == house -- it was the only hotel on the canal. so the middle section of the great falls tavern was the original lock house. where the first lock family lived. in 1831, we finish the two additions on the north and south end. the north end is the hotel. and bottom floor where you buy your tickets was called the ballroom. and it was a tavern, so it did serve alcohol back then.

that is when people would come from georgetown. they would take a four hour trip to great falls and they would ride boats like this one a passenger boat. they would take those trips to escape the city and stay at great falls to get away, relax. and they would stay in the second or third floor. the second floor was for men and female quarters. they had to stay separately on the second floor unless they were able to provide a marriage license. if they were able to do that, they could stay on the third floor which was the attic or honeymoon suite. so they , for an extra charge they could stay on the top floor. then the south end of the tavern was the new lock house where the lock family stayed. so, with this particular lock, it was actually the lock keeper would tend to three locks.

they would like 20 here and -- lock 20 here and 18 and 19 downstream. one man taking care of three locks is hard to do. he would, depending on how many locks he tended, depended on how much money he got paid. so with three locks, h e would get $150. that would allow him to hire an assistant so that he would be able to go ahead and have him help with the rest of the locks. but the canal company was smart and they decided they needed to hire men that had large families. if you hire the husband of a large family you would get the rest of the family for free. so, the the rest of the family would help him as well working. the wife would help and even

some of the older children. and they would be able to stay here in the lock houses for free. they would get the $250 along with the house and he would also get an acre of land. what that acre allow them to do was to be able to provide for themselves heard they were able to do produce, have farm animals they needed like cows, chickens, pigs so that they would be able to sustain themselves. that $250 was per year. in the peak of the canal in the 1870, if you're waiting at a lock in 30 minutes there were 15 to 20 point 00-- boats waiting. they're obviously not horses but people confuse them for horses or donkeys. there a combination of the two.

the male is the donkey, the female is the horse. that is how you get a meal. a female horse and the male donkey. if you do it the other way around, you get something else. they do not have the same type of working genes we want mules to have. we decided mules would be a better fit. throughout history there was uses of horses, the pony express would pull wagons. they were used for various things. the question that comes up as white work -- why were mules used here instead of horses? various reasons. if you characteristics mules get from donkeys. their ears make them aware of their surroundings. their feet are a different

shape, more oval-shaped. horses are more circular. what that does it makes them circuitous. that allows them to know where they are placing your foot at all times. they're not skittish like horses. horses tend to rear up and it takes a while to calm down. our mules are not as jumping. back then there would be snakes on the towpath. with a horse it would get reared up and you would have to wait for it to come down. with a mule, it would stop. it would go ahead and wait for you to move the snake out of the way so it would not cause any harm to itself. they are also very smart. mules are smarter than horses. with a horse, you can work a horse to death because horses are there to please their master. they want to do nothing more

than make you happy. if you had a horse on the canal you could run a dead into the ground from working. mules, i am an sure you have heard "stubborn as a mule. " after six hours it is going to stop working. say i'm not trying to hurt myself and you cannot push me any further. i'm going to stand here until you change me out. our mules are dolly and eva. two of our youngest mules. dolly is 11, eva is 10. they are connected by two chains in the middle. eva, on the back, has a tree. it's a metal bar that connects our towline to our boat. they're pulling us at about two

miles an hour. they could pull us faster but we usually do not want to go faster than this. back end a could not go any faster because there was a speed limit of four miles an hour on the canal. seems crazy but there is a good reason. and you look on the side of the canal, you can tell that some spot are covered up with rocks but most of the time there are no rocks. so, if we had a boat that when any faster than four miles and are, we would start to cause a wake. this that, since you had 550 boats on the peak of this canal, you would end up causing the water to rush upu the sides of the canal --

and damage the canal and make it not last as long. that four miles an hour was very enforced by lock keeperes. s. that's why we could not go any faster than that. our typical boats on the cn anal, these are what barges would look like. they were 90 feet long and 14.5 feet wide. i did say we like to cut things close. we are on a tight budget on the canal. so we had three inches of clearance to come in. so you had to be good at your job steering in as the tiller, because if you ended up doing any damage to the lock, that means you are doing damage to your boat. therefore you had to pay for any damage to did to the lock and boat. the tiller would be located in the back, the stern. you have this cabin. called the family cabin. it was 12.5 by 12.5 feet,

extremely small. the only space you had in their for room, you would have, cooking would be done back here. some cleaning of any sort you would have, a toilet. a bucket. on then you would have one or two beds. up here in the front, this is our bow. this little barn here was the barn. it was where our extra set of mules were hledeld. they would only work six hours. we would have two sets of mules, so we could change them out every six hours or every 15 miles. on top of that, the barn was also the place where most of the family would sleep because a were also big families on the canal boats. since that was not enough room in the family cabin with the beds they would end up sleeping in the barn. all throughout the middle, this

iws where our cargo was. coal was the main cargo. it was used to heat the homes. used for cooking. you would have goods coming from georgetown as well. georgetown was the factory town back then. so, you did have mills that would produce grain. timber would come from there. any type of furniture, textiles goods, clothing, all would be coming from georgetown shipped up north to the ports in between. so, this was a two-way traffic back then. and therew was only one toe path that was used for mules. so the question i'm sure you guys are thinking of is how are two boats if they are going in opposite directions going to pass each other?

so, there was a very -- very logical way we did this here. our tiller back there would yell " tip yip yaw." >> tee yip yaw! >> that was our saying we used. all that means our mule stopped. what is going to happen is we are going to turn our boat around. back then, you would not be able to do this because your boats were longer. we are cutting it close. so like i said, these were very family oriented boats. we wouuld hld the father would be on the front of the boat in charge of looking out for any dangers making sure the otetow line was safe. on the back of the boat, you would have the mother. the mother would be in charge of

steering along with doing tours mostly sewing. so the men can no longer say women were no good at driving. the children, if they were of a certain age, nine years old, we would actually get the right to work. we'd go ahead and have been walking with our mules. at the age of nine, they would go ahead and start working. i promise it was not child labor. if they were any younger we had to do something with them. they could not work, but they could not be running around causing problems. so, what we would do is we'd taking something -- take something that looks like this. an old harness take this top section and use it. you can see there's a rope attached. you might see where this is going. if not, i have a picture. so it is awesome.

so, this is a family in georgetown. the mom is doing logic and she did not want her kids running around the port. so she went ahead and tied them up. yep in the winter we are closed for four months. it would usually start in early november. then would not open back up until april. when we did close down, there were a lot of times that we did our maintenance on the canal because back then it had to be kept six feet deep. you had to make sure you had enough room in between the bottom of the canal and the bottom of your boat. we have little creeks that run into the canal and they would bring in sediment that causes sandbars or making it hard for us to maintain six feet. in the winter, we drain o ut

certain sections of the canal so that we would be able to use a shovel and dig out that dirt that was in there so we could keep it at the minimum of six feet deep. once we finally got the maintenance all done, we would go ahead and let water back in. how we would do that is we couuld not use the the summit but is a good water source. it was a two-part system. the inlet locks connects to the potomac. and a dam connected to the locks. we would allow the water from the potomac to rush into the canal. and then we would have a backup source of water in case we had problems with the river. of only the first 22 miles of the canal nowadays actually has water. then it gets spotty. kids does not sound like they

had a very good life. during the four-month they were closed, the canal, they would go to school for those four months. our school system back then was very different. you had a series of looks you had to go through. so no matter how old you were a what grade you were in, if you could not get past the first book you had you cannot move on to the second one. what the first book consisted up, mostly things like your abc's, how to count and how to write. then once you got to the second and third books you learned how to put words together, how to add and subtract. so, they did not need to know much on the canal. but they did need to know adding, subtracting, reading writing and all of that. however, our locks keepers were on call 24/7. so they were constantly working. so, they always had to be ready to work. how they would know that they

needed to have the lock ready is on the boat we would have the horn. we'd blow that horn. our captain would yell, "hey lock>." it notified the keeper. the lock houses are all white. it makes them easier to see at night, so that people running 24 hours a day would go ahead and see them at night and would blow their horn to notify the lock keepers. the canal here has lots of history. we as the c&o canal company went bankrupt, as the potomac being our water source, it causes a lot of trouble and damage because whenever it floods we f lood as well. this was a very pricey job to be done. it took a lot more money we had expected to finish the

completion of the cnanal which stopped in 1850. so we ended up going bankrupt. our competitors at the time, the baltimore railroad, took over operations for us. and so, they kind of mae sure -- made sure we did not use it as frequently as we did in the 1870's, because they wanted to be the main transport for any oacoal or cargo. they took over operations, and they did have to do a lot of reconstruction after flooding from the potomac. so the last flood that we had when they were in control of us was in 1924. they decided that it was too much money to do the repairs that needed to be done after that flood. so they went ahead and close down the chesapeake and ohio canal for good. in 1924.

back then, there are only six boats money. so it's not really in use -- [horn blows] >> hey lock! >> so, it was not in as much use as it was because the railroad ended up getting a technology they needed like air brakes and couplings between the two carts. they became more efficient and transporting goods. in 1924, we were not used as much. so, we went ahead and close down the canal. 12 years later, the national park service actually went ahead and bought the chesapeake and ohio canal from a railroad for $2 million. they got steel -- a steal and all the acreage they got. then in the 1950's they decided that with all of this land and all of it dug out already that it would make a really good pathway to actually create a

highway. known as the seattle parkway. -- the c&o parkway. they wanted to remove the historical properties to create that highway to connect, let to -- cumberland to georgetown. obviously, it was not a good idea. it is still here today. the reason why are canal is here today is because there is one man that was a very -- very fond of the canal. and he was a supreme court justice -- william douglas. he loved the canal very much and was very hadn't about the fact the national parks decided it would be a good idea to turn this into a parkway -- he was very saddened. he challenged two washington post editors that wrote an editorial saying that it wouuldld be a good idea -- he challenged them to hike the can al. 184 miles long. after that hike, they saw the

beautiful things on the canal and decided that maybe it is not a good idea to turn this into a parkway. so obviously, it stays here today. and william douglas was that -- he saved this park so you guys can enjoy today instead of sitting in traffic on a parkway. so we are going to go ahead and do the same thing when we entered the lock. instead of raising the water, we are going to lower the water. and do it the same way we did it. we are going to use those wicket doors. and go ahead and turn those keys so we can open the doors and let the water out. [water rushing]

[whistle] announcer: we went ahead and opened up our agtes. -- our gates. once our gatse arees open, we have to get back to shore somehow. with that being said, i have to get off the bota. at. i hope you enjoyed your ride. if you have any last minute questions, please do not hesitate to ask. thank you guys for joining us on the charles mercer. i hope you enjoyed your ride ok? [applause] >> you did a fine job.

>> thank you. announcer: you have been watching american artifacts on c-span 3's american history tv. you can view this and all our other programs online at c-span.org/history. up next on american history tv, cornell university history professor fred logevall talks about how policymakers use and misuse the past. he cites a number of analogies