Aqueducts on the C&O Canal

The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (C&O) used 11 navigable aqueducts to carry the canal over rivers and streams that were too wide for a culvert to contain. Aqueducts, like locks and other masonry structures, were called "works of art" by the canal board of directors.

In addition to these 11 aqueducts, there was the Alexandria Aqueduct, which connected the C&O Canal with Alexandria, Virginia, and the Broad Run Trunk Aqueduct, made of wood, and was originally a double culvert, and never listed in company records as an aqueduct.

The aqueducts of the C&O, unlike the Roman aqueducts, were built with inferior materials and cement, and did not have a long life expectancy. Usually the trash from the floods did the most harm to the aqueducts.

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