In the mid-17th century, mapmaker Augustine Herman observed that these great bodies of water were separated only by a narrow strip of land.

The canal saves approximately 300 miles on the route between Wilmington or Philadelphia on the Delaware River and Baltimore on Chesapeake Bay, avoiding a course around the Delmarva Peninsula.

In the mid‑17th century, Augustine Herman, a mapmaker and Prague native who had served as an envoy for the Dutch, observed that two great bodies of water, the Delaware River and Chesapeake Bay, were separated only by a narrow strip of land.

Laborers toiled with pick and shovel at the immense construction task, working for an average daily wage of 75 cents.

The swampy marshlands along the canal's planned route proved a great impediment to progress; workers continuously battled slides along the "ditch's" soft slopes.

In 1825, due to the efforts of Benjamin Wright, the company fired the canal's chief engineer, John Randel Jr., who had surveyed its route and built the difficult eastern section.

A covered wooden bridge at Summit, Delaware, spanned the canal across the "Deep Cut", measuring 250 feet (76 m) between abutments.

Cargoes included practically every useful item of daily life: lumber, grain, farm products, fish, cotton, coal, iron, and whiskey.

Along the route across the top of the Delmarva Peninsula, at least six lighthouses warned barges and other vessels passing through the canal when they were approaching bridges and locks.

The Baltimore and Philadelphia Steamship Companies, which operated the Ericsson line, built and furnished ships with seventy to eighty staterooms in addition to the freight facilities.

1 Light Street Pier for 75 years, serving passenger and freight demands throughout the waterway with thirty registered steamers.

As boats passed through at Chesapeake City, the equivalent of a full lock of water was lost to the lower-lying portion of the canal.

This loss, compounded by leakage through the canal banks and normal evaporation, made it necessary to devise a means of lifting water into the project's upper part.

New companies were formed instead, considering at least six new canal routes, but committees and commissions appointed to study the issue failed to agree on a plan.

In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt appointed a new commission to report on the feasibility of converting the canal to a "free and open waterway."

The railroad and Summit spans were recognized by the American Institute of Steel Construction as the most beautiful bridges of their types in the years they were completed.

But modernization had arrived on Canal as closed circuit televisions, radar, and advanced in radio communications made the work of meeting incoming boats and other tasks obsolete.

[13] Today's canal is a modern sea-level, electronically controlled commercial waterway, serving as the northern maritime gateway to the Port of Baltimore.

Cargo ships, tankers, container-carrying vessels (all up to Seawaymax-classification), barges accompanied by tugboats, and countless recreational boats create a steady flow of traffic.

Through state-of-the-art fiber optic and microwave links, dispatchers use closed-circuit television and radio systems to monitor and safely move commercial traffic through the waterway.

Navigating oceangoing vessels requires extensive maritime skills, with strong currents or bad weather conditions adding to the risks.

Current operations can be viewed through a television monitor affording visitors up-to-the minute locations on ships traveling through the canal.

The original lighthouse was used to warn vessels of locks and bridges in the days before the 1927 canal changes made it sea level.

The following are crossings of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal north to south and vice versa: Notes Sources Further reading Download coordinates as: