The Erie Canal in New York is part of the east–west, cross-state route of the New York State Canal System. It was built to create a navigable water route from New York City and the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, originally stretching for 363 miles (584 km) from the Hudson River in Albany to Lake Erie in Buffalo. Completed in 1825, it was the second-longest canal in the world and greatly enhanced the development and economy of the cities of New York, including Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, and New York City, as well as the United States. This was in part due to the new ease of transport of salt and other goods, and industries that developed around those.
Columbia, formerly Wright's Ferry, is a borough (town) in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, United States. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 10,400. It is 28 miles (45 km) southeast of Harrisburg, on the east (left) bank of the Susquehanna River, across from Wrightsville and York County and just south of U.S. Route 30.
Wrightsville is a borough in York County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 2,310 at the 2010 census. Wrightsville borough has a police department, historic society, and a volunteer fire company.
The Susquehanna River is a major river located in Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, overlapping between the lower Northeast and the Upland South. At 444 miles (715 km) long, it is the longest river on the East Coast of the United States. By watershed area, it is the 16th-largest river in the United States, and also the longest river in the early 21st-century continental United States without commercial boat traffic.
The Chemung River is a tributary of the Susquehanna River, approximately 46.4 miles (74.7 km) long, in south central New York and northern Pennsylvania in the United States. It drains a mountainous region of the northern Allegheny Plateau in the Southern Tier of New York. The valley of the river has long been an important manufacturing center in the region but has suffered a decline in the late 20th century.
The Chenango Canal was a towpath canal built and operated in the mid-19th century in central New York in the United States. It was 97 miles long and for much of its course followed the Chenango River, along Rt. 12 N-S from Binghamton on the south end to Utica on the north end. It operated from 1834 to 1878 and provided a significant link in the water transportation system of the northeastern U.S., connecting the Susquehanna River to the Erie Canal.
The Union Canal was a towpath canal that existed in southeastern Pennsylvania in the United States during the 19th century. First proposed in 1690 to connect Philadelphia with the Susquehanna River, it ran approximately 82 mi from Middletown on the Susquehanna below Harrisburg to Reading on the Schuylkill River.
The Delaware and Hudson Railway (D&H) is a railroad that operated independently in the Northeastern United States. In 1991, after more than 150 years as an independent railroad, the D&H was purchased by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CP). CP operated the D&H under its subsidiary Soo Line Corporation, which also operates Soo Line Railroad. In 2015, Norfolk Southern bought a large portion of the former D&H rail lines from CP.
The Main Line of Public Works was a package of legislation supporting a vision passed in 1826—a collection of various long proposed canal and road projects that became a canal system and later added railroads designed to cross the breadth of Pennsylvania with the visionary goal of providing the best commercial means of transportation between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Built between 1826 and 1834 by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, it established the Pennsylvania Canal System, the Allegheny Portage Railroad, and the Pennsylvania Canal System administrated under a new Commission.
The Northern Central Railway (NCRY) was a Class I Railroad connecting Baltimore, Maryland with Sunbury, Pennsylvania, along the Susquehanna River. Completed in 1858, the line came under the control of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) in 1861, when the PRR acquired a controlling interest in the Northern Central's stock to compete with the rival Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O). For eleven decades the Northern Central operated as a subsidiary of the PRR until much of its Maryland trackage was washed out by Hurricane Agnes in 1972, after which most of its operations ceased as the Penn Central declined to repair sections. It is now a fallen flag railway, having come under the control of the later Penn Central, Conrail, and then broken apart and disestablished. The southern part in Pennsylvania is now the York County Heritage Rail Trail which connects to a similar hike/bike trail in Northern Maryland down to Baltimore, named the Torrey C. Brown Rail Trail. Only the trackage around Baltimore remains in rail service.
The Columbia–Wrightsville Bridge, officially the Veterans Memorial Bridge, spans the Susquehanna River between Columbia and Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, and carries Pennsylvania Route 462 and BicyclePA Route S. Built originally as the Lancaster-York Intercounty Bridge, construction began in 1929, and the bridge opened September 30, 1930. On November 11, 1980, it was officially dedicated as Veterans Memorial Bridge, though it is still referenced locally as the Columbia–Wrightsville Bridge.
The Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge once carried the York Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad across the Susquehanna River between Columbia and Wrightsville, Pennsylvania and is therefore considered a Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge. It and its predecessors were a vital commercial and passenger linkage between Philadelphia and Baltimore for over 100 years.
The Mason-Dixon Trail is a 195.9-mile (315.3 km), blue-blazed footpath that connects the Appalachian Trail with the Brandywine Trail, passing through Gifford Pinchot State Park and White Clay Creek Preserve in Pennsylvania and White Clay Creek State Park in Delaware. About 30 per cent of the "trail" is a route marked along public roads; the remainder is actual trail.
The Pennsylvania Canal was a complex system of transportation infrastructure improvements including canals, dams, locks, tow paths, aqueducts, and viaducts. The Canal and Works were constructed and assembled over several decades beginning in 1824, the year of the first enabling act and budget items. It should be understood the first use of any railway in North America was the year 1826, so the newspapers and the Pennsylvania Assembly of 1824 applied the term then to the proposed rights of way mainly for the canals of the Main Line of Public Works to be built across the southern part of Pennsylvania.
The geography of New York state varies widely. Most of New York is dominated by farms, forests, rivers, mountains, and lakes. New York's Adirondack Park is larger than any U.S. National Park in the contiguous United States. Niagara Falls, on the Niagara River as it flows from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, is a popular attraction. The Hudson River begins near Lake Tear of the Clouds and flows south through the eastern part of the state without draining lakes George or Champlain. Lake George empties at its north end into Lake Champlain, whose northern end extends into Canada, where it drains into the Richelieu River and then the St. Lawrence. Four of New York City's five boroughs are on the three islands at the mouth of the Hudson River: Manhattan Island, Staten Island, and Brooklyn and Queens on Long Island.
The North Branch Division of the Pennsylvania Canal was a historic waterway that ran 169 miles (272 km) along the North Branch Susquehanna River between southern New York and north-central Pennsylvania in the United States. At its southern end, the canal connected with the West Branch Canal and the Susquehanna Division Canal at Northumberland, while on the north it connected with the Junction Canal and the New York canal system. Built between 1828 and 1856, the North Branch Canal was part of a large transportation network that included Pennsylvania's Main Line of Public Works.
The Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal between Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, and Havre de Grace, Maryland, at the head of Chesapeake Bay, provided an interstate shipping alternative to 19th-century arks, rafts, and boats plying the difficult waters of the lower Susquehanna River. Built between 1836 and 1840, it ran 43 miles (69 km) along the west bank of the river and rendered obsolete an older, shorter canal along the east bank. Of its total length, 30 miles (48 km) were in Pennsylvania and 13 miles (21 km) in Maryland. Though rivalry between Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Baltimore, Maryland, delayed its construction, the finished canal brought increased shipments of coal and other raw materials to both cities from Pennsylvania's interior. Competition from railroads was a large factor in the canal's decline after 1855. Canal remnants, including a lock keeper's house, have been preserved in Maryland, and locks 12 and 15 have been preserved in Pennsylvania. A copy of a detailed survey blueprint of the entire canal system including structures and property ownership details was donated by the Safe Harbor Water Power Corporation to Millersville University. The survey consists of 67 pages, 98 x 30 cm. and is undated but the assumption is the original was created while the canal was in use.
The Wrightsville Dam was a 19th-century dam on the lower Susquehanna River between Wrightsville and Columbia, Pennsylvania.
The Schuylkill and Susquehanna Navigation Company was a limited liability corporation founded in Pennsylvania on September 29, 1791. The company was founded for the purpose of improving river navigation which in the post-colonial United States era of the 1790s meant improving river systems, not canals. In this Pennsylvania scheme, however, two rivers, a large river, the Susquehanna and a smaller one, the Schuylkill were to be improved by clearing channels through obstructions and building dams where needed. To connect the two watersheds, the company proposed a four-mile summit level crossing at Lebanon Pennsylvania, a length of almost eighty miles between the two rivers. The completed project was intended to be part of a navigable water route from Philadelphia to Lake Erie and the Ohio valley.
