The James and North (now Maury) Rivers offered a way for farmers and merchants to ship products out and bring in manufactured goods. Rockbridge producers would build a bateau - a large, flat-bottomed boat - and float down to Richmond with wheat, corn, iron and whisky and the pole the bateau back up river with goods they couldn’t manufacture themselves.
By the late 1700s, canals along the rivers were seen as a viable way to move cargo and people inland. The James River and Kanawha Canal was started west from Richmond, with the ultimate goal of connecting with the Ohio River by way of the Kanawha in what’s now West Virginia. By 1840, the canal was built to Lynchburg, and by 1851 reached Buchanan. In 1860, the North River Navigation Company finished a canal from Lexington down to the mouth of the Maury, where it met the James River Canal.
The canal port at Jordan’s Point became Lexington’s industrial center, but the era of canals was short-lived. Floods, damage from the Civil War and the coming of railroads doomed the canal.
The canal company sold its right-of-way to the Richmond & Allegheny Railroad, later the Chesapeake & Ohio, now CSX. Part of the old canal towpath was used to construct a rail line up to Lexington from Balcony Falls, near present day Glasgow, opening in 1881.
Canal locks, like the well-preserved one at Ben Salem Wayside, allowed the canal boats to move up and down the river around rapids in the stream. The wayside is a popular picnic spot for locals and visitors.
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