BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Georgetown -- C&O Canal NHP

DC -- Georgetown -- C&O Canal NHP:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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[1] GTOWNC_080907_03.JPG	[2] GTOWNC_080907_15.JPG	[3] GTOWNC_080907_24.JPG	[4] GTOWNC_080907_31.JPG	[5] GTOWNC_080907_37.JPG
[6] GTOWNC_080907_58.JPG	[7] GTOWNC_080907_64.JPG	[8] GTOWNC_080907_69.JPG	[9] GTOWNC_080907_72.JPG	[10] GTOWNC_080907_80.JPG
[11] GTOWNC_080907_82.JPG	[12] GTOWNC_080907_90.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. GTOWNC_080907_24.JPG: Street person
2. GTOWNC_080907_64.JPG: Mule Power: Mules were the "engines" for the canal boats. Normally, a boat captain had four mules. Two worked while two rested in their stall in the front of the boat. Captains usually cared for their mules as if they were part of the family. In the canal's peak years, the 1870s, there were about 3,000 mules working on the canal.
3. GTOWNC_080907_69.JPG: At All Hours: "It shall be their duty, at all hours, by night as well as by day, to pass all boats and floats presenting themselves at their locks." -- Charles Mercer, President, C&O Canal Company Every time his boat passed through a lock, a boat captain put his life and livelihood in the hands of the locktender. The wooden lock gates were a delicate balance between safety and efficiency. They had to be light enough to allow one man to move them, yet strong enough to hold back 140,000 gallons of water. A skilled locktender could judge and adjust the flow of water in or out of the lock to minimize the risk to boat and lock. Locktenders were responsible for the safe operation and maintenance of liftlocks. Neglect of carelessness could mean disaster. In exchange a small monthly salary, an acre of land and house, locktenders heeded the horn blast of boatmen even at 2am or on Sunday. After all, time was money.
4. GTOWNC_080907_72.JPG: Creating a National Park: "It is a refuge, a place of retreat, a long stretch of quiet and peace at the Capital's back door..." -- William O Douglas Look around you. The park you stand in exists because people cared. In January 1954, Justice William O. Douglas of the Supreme Court of the United States responded to a Washington Post editorial recommending that the C&O Canal be turned into a parkway. Writing in support of preserving the canal as a national park, Douglas wrote, "It is a sanctuary for everyone who loves woods -- a sanctuary that would be utterly destroyed by a fine two lane highway." He invited the editors and other reporters to join him on a hike of the entire canal to enjoy its beauty and better understand his point. Merlo Pusey, who wrote the editorial, and his editor Robert Estabrook accepted the challenge. On March 22, 1954, the hike began near Cumberland. Douglas and his companions invited authorities on the natural and cultural history of the Potomac River and the C&O Canal to join them. The hikers learned about the canal and enjoyed the scenery. After the hike, Estabrook wrote an editorial in the Post supporting setting the canal aside as a national park. The walk, and the news stories it generated, motivated hundreds to fight to save the canal. In 1961, the C&O Canal was preserved as a National Monument. Through Douglas's action and the efforts of those he inspired, this park was preserved for you to enjoy. If you would like to learn what you can do to help care for the park, visit the nearest park visitor center.
Description of Subject Matter: This is the Georgetown segment of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal. Begun in 1828 just inside DC, its 185-mile length extended up past Harper's Ferry before reaching its terminus here in Georgetown in 1840. This included 74 locks. Moving at just four miles an hour, the canals were a main method of transportation for goods until the railroads wiped them out.

The Canal was almost paved over in the 1950's to make way for the Whitehurst Freeway. Supreme Court justice William Douglas led a successful campaign which preserved the Canal and the freeway was built on an overpass instead.

The Canal became a popular walking and biking route. In October 1964, Mary Meyer was shot to death while walking here. She had been known to be having an affair with President John Kennedy from 1961 until his death in November 1963. She had told friends including Ben Bradlee, the publisher of the Washington Post, about it but, of course, in those days you didn't print those things. She had a diary which disappeared afterward.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
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