Importance of studying canals compared to river
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Historically canals were of immense importance to commerce and the development, growth and vitality of a civilization. In 1855 the Lehigh Canal carried over 1.2 million tons of clean burning anthracite coal; by the 1930s the company which built and operated it over a century pulled the plug. The few canals still in operation in our modern age are a fraction of the numbers that once fueled and enabled economic growth, indeed were practically a prerequisite to further urbanization and industrialization—for the movement of bulk raw materials such as coal and ores are difficult and marginally affordable without water transport. Such raw materials fueled the industrial developments and new metallurgy resulting of the spiral of increasing mechanization during 17th–20th century, leading to new research disciplines, new industries and economies of scale, raising the standard of living for any industrialized society.
The surviving canals, including most ship canals, today primarily service mostly bulk cargo and large ship transportation industries, whereas the once critical smaller inland waterways conceived and engineered as boat and barge canals have largely been supplanted and filled in, abandoned and left to deteriorate, or kept in service and staffed by state employees, where dams and locks are maintained for flood control or pleasure boating. Their replacement was gradual, beginning first in the United States in the mid-1850s where canal shipping was first augmented by, then began being replaced by using much faster, less geographically constrained & limited, and generally cheaper to maintain railways.
By the early 1880s, canals which had little ability to economically compete with rail transport, were off the map. In the next couple of decades, coal was increasingly diminished as the heating fuel of choice by oil, and growth of coal shipments levelled off. Later, after World War I when motor-trucks came into their own, the last small U.S. barge canals saw a steady decline in cargo ton-miles alongside many railways, the flexibility and steep slope climbing capability of lorries taking over cargo hauling increasingly as road networks were improved, and which also had the freedom to make deliveries well away from rail lined road beds or ditches in the dirt which couldn't operate in the winter.
The surviving canals, including most ship canals, today primarily service mostly bulk cargo and large ship transportation industries, whereas the once critical smaller inland waterways conceived and engineered as boat and barge canals have largely been supplanted and filled in, abandoned and left to deteriorate, or kept in service and staffed by state employees, where dams and locks are maintained for flood control or pleasure boating. Their replacement was gradual, beginning first in the United States in the mid-1850s where canal shipping was first augmented by, then began being replaced by using much faster, less geographically constrained & limited, and generally cheaper to maintain railways.
By the early 1880s, canals which had little ability to economically compete with rail transport, were off the map. In the next couple of decades, coal was increasingly diminished as the heating fuel of choice by oil, and growth of coal shipments levelled off. Later, after World War I when motor-trucks came into their own, the last small U.S. barge canals saw a steady decline in cargo ton-miles alongside many railways, the flexibility and steep slope climbing capability of lorries taking over cargo hauling increasingly as road networks were improved, and which also had the freedom to make deliveries well away from rail lined road beds or ditches in the dirt which couldn't operate in the winter.
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