Digging the Big Ditch

No work on Port Tobacco today...barely a thought given to it. Instead, I spent the day in Cecil County working with the Archeological Society of the Northern Chesapeake, a chapter of the Archeological Society of Maryland. We continued work started last April, clearing, mapping and testing deposits around the 1803 locks of the Susquehanna Canal, which runs up the Susquehanna River from Port Deposit to the Conowingo Dam.

ASNC members working on the uppermost of three canal locks dating to 1803.

Ann Persson and Dan Coates have been leading the effort. Although much remains to be done, the work to date clearly demonstrates that this site is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. We hope someday to see the series of three locks completely cleared, stabilized, and restored for public interpretation of one of the nation's earliest transportation engineering works. Secondarily, I think this site will become something of a monument to the role of voluntary groups in documenting and preserving these important traces of our collective past.

Jim