Canals

Abstract

Since the eighteenth century, canals and canal building have been an important part of Tidewater North Carolina history. Between the American Revolution [5] and the Civil War [6], many political leaders-Hillsborough representative Archibald D. Murphey [7] prime among them-viewed canals as the state's best hope for overcoming such natural barriers to coastal navigation and mercantile trade as shifting inlets [8], shallow harbors, and broad shoals. Alarmed by declining maritime trade and a high rate of outmigration in the early nineteenth century, Murphey and other progressives [9] pinned their hopes on large canals that would allow sailing vessels to avoid the Outer Banks, as well as on smaller canals around the falls of rivers to extend shipping farther into the North Carolina interior. Some of their canal-building schemes were truly magnificent. One route that seized the General Assembly [10]'s imagination in varying guises for several decades would have linked the Chesapeake Bay with Old Topsail Inlet near Beaufort, a route that bypassed Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout altogether. Variations called for as many as five canals spanning 90 miles. Unrealistic at the time for financial and technological reasons, the plan was a testament to how profoundly the state's boosters placed their hopes in canal building before the advent of railroads [11].