The Potomac Canal: George Washington and the Waterway West is a history of a new nation’s first effort to link the rich western agricultural lands with the coastal port cities of the east. The Potomac Canal Company was founded in 1785, and was active until it was overtaken by the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company in 1828. During its operation, the canal system was used to ship flour from mills in the foothills of Appalachia to the tidewater of the Chesapeake, where the flour was shipped to the Caribbean as trade for sugar and other goods. This trade soon became the basis of agricultural wealth in West Virginia’s eastern panhandle and throughout the Appalachian Piedmont. Coal was also shipped via the canal system from the upper reaches of the Potomac River to workshops at Harpers Ferry and beyond. This industrial trade route laid the foundation for what would eventually become the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

Robert J. Kapsch, PhD, Hon. AIA, ASCE, holds doctorates in American studies, engineering, and architecture, as well as master’s degrees in historic preservation and management. For fifteen years, Dr. Kapsch was chief of the Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, the U.S. government’s premier documentation program. He is the author of several books on historic architecture and engineering, including Canals, an illustrated history of American canals.