File:Coast watch (1979) (20038057204).jpg

Title: Coast watch
Identifier: coastwatch00uncs_19 (find matches)
Year: 1979 (1970s)
Authors: UNC Sea Grant College Program
Subjects: Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology
Publisher: (Raleigh, N. C. : UNC Sea Grant College Program)
Contributing Library: State Library of North Carolina
Digitizing Sponsor: North Carolina Digital Heritage Center

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In 1784, then-Gov. Patrick Henry of Virginia proposed a canal, and that same year, the Dismal Swamp Canal Company was created. Digging progressed slowly because work had to be done with hand shovels. By 1796, the costs of building the canal had far exceeded the projected estimates, prompting the company to stop work and begin a road to connect the two canal sections. The road was completed in 1802. nal Commerce Three years later, the full canal opened, Walter says. Because the waterway was so shallow, it was limited to flat boats and log rafts that were manually poled or towed. Shipments consisted mainly of logs, shingles and other wood products from the swamp's great stands of cedar and juniper. "The canal became the first major means of commerce between northeastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia and opened the trade corridors between the sounds of North Carolina and the Chesapeake Bay," explains Robert Peek, Deep Creek lockmaster and bridge tender. Though important to the logging industry, the canal never lived up to its original purpose of serving as a major regional waterway in its first decades. In 1813, the Feeder Ditch was dug to provide water for the canal and to simplify travel to Lake Drummond in Virginia. The three-mile ditch is about three feet deep and reaches to the heart of the Dismal Swamp Canal. When the canal was made deeper in 1829 to accommodate vessels drawing 5.5 feet of water, steamboats began hauling goods through the passage. The canal's heyday from 1829 to 1859 was the only time that investors were paid well, according to George Ramsey, director of the southeast region of the Virginia Canals & Navigations Society. "They shipped pigs, livestock, meat, beef and pork. The canal also was heavy on tar for naval stores in North Carolina and Virginia," adds Ramsey. "They got the tar — not from the ground — but from boiling down the sap of pine trees." During the antebellum period, many slaves also used the canal.
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"There is no telling how many runaway slaves, possibly hundreds, followed the canal and the canal bank road north toward freedom," says Bland Simpson, author of The Great Dismal, A Carolinian's Swamp Memoir. "The canal is an engineering marvel and a truly wonderful part of America's maritime heritage." With the opening of the Albemarle- Chesapeake Canal in 1859, the Dismal Canal's commerce dropped. However, the onset of the Civil War put the Dismal Canal in an important strategic position for Union and Confederate forces. Following disrepair after the war, private interests revitalized the canal in the mid- 1890s. By the 1920s, commercial traffic had subsided except for passenger vessels. The infrequent use and poor maintenance of the canal led to the federal government buying it in 1929 for $500,000. Throughout its history, much has been written about the canal and the surrounding swamp's dark secrets, ghost stories and tales of hidden runaway slaves. These tales have been seasoned with accounts of ferocious bears, screaming bobcats and diverse flora. Bob Hines, who grew up on Sawyer's Creek that originates on the east side of the swamp, has seen of a lot of wildlife in and near the swamp — from wild hogs to bears, raccoons and bobcats. "One time, my dad and I were driving down the road near the west side of the swamp during the summer, and we saw a cougar," says Hines, a North Carolina Sea Grant fisheries specialist. "It appeared to be black or at least dark in the dim light. It was very catlike and had a long tail. Anyway, no one ever believed that we saw it." 14 Coastwatch I Spring 2006 I www.ncseagrcmi.org

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