Early in the 19th century, the Leiper Canal built in 1828–29 during the middle of the American canal age ran about along

Crum Creek Crum Creek (from the Dutch, meaning "crooked creek") is a creek in Delaware County and Chester County, Pennsylvania, flowing approximately , generally in a southward direction and draining into the Delaware River in Eddystone, Pennsylvania. ...

in Delaware County to its mouth in eastern

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

Delaware Valley The Philadelphia metropolitan area, also known as Greater Philadelphia and informally called the Delaware Valley, the Philadelphia tri-state area, and locally and colloquially Philly–Jersey–Delaware, is a major metropolitan area in the Nor ...

carrying its owner‘s quarried products to docks on the

Delaware River The Delaware River is a major river in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States and is the longest free-flowing (undammed) river in the Eastern United States. From the meeting of its branches in Hancock, New York, the river flows for a ...

tidewater until 1852.

Early days

Previously, a horse-drawn tramway, the

Leiper Railroad The Leiper Railroad was a 'family business–built' horse drawn railroad of , constructed in 1810 after the quarry owner, Thomas Leiper, failed to obtain a charter with legal rights-of-way to instead build his desired canal along Crum Creek. The ...

, carried stone from the quarry for 18 years before the opening of the canal. The tramway was built by Leiper's father,

Thomas Leiper Thomas Leiper (15 December 1745 – 6 July 1825) was a Scottish American businessman, banker and politician who owned a successful tobacco exportation business as well as several mills and stone quarries. He served as a lieutenant in the First T ...

, whose request to build a canal in 1791 was denied by the Pennsylvania Legislature. However, the Legislature of 1824 were of a different mind, and were unbiased by reports of failed attempts to improve the

Schuylkill River The Schuylkill River ( , ) is a river in eastern Pennsylvania. It flows for U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map(). accessed April 1, 2011. from Pottsville, Pennsylvania, Pottsville ...

(a series of failures, back to 1764) as they were debating parts of the

Main Line of Public Works The Main Line of Public Works was a package of legislation passed by the Pennsylvania, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1826 to establish a means of transporting freight between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. It funded the construction of various lon ...

omnibus transportation package of bills, and the project, once ranked a crackpot idea, was in 1824 simply stylish.

Changing times

As it had evinced enthusiasms for toll roads connecting the far off frontier settlements to the east, or to better connect parts of the old east itself, between 1790 and 1820, as the 1820s progressed, the whole nation had entered a period of frenzied canal building spurred on by the successful effects of the commerce on the

Lehigh Canal The Lehigh Canal is a navigable canal that begins at the mouth of Nesquehoning Creek on the Lehigh River in the Lehigh Valley and Northeastern regions of Pennsylvania. It was built in two sections over a span of 20 years beginning in 1818. Th ...

and

Schuylkill Canal The Schuylkill Canal, or Schuylkill Navigation, was a system of interconnected canals and slack-water pools along the Schuylkill River in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, built as a commercial waterway in the early 19th-century. Chartered in 1815 ...

s; along with the ongoing construction of the Union Canal,

Chesapeake and Delaware Canal The Chesapeake & Delaware Canal (C&D Canal) is a -long, -wide and -deep ship canal that connects the Delaware River with the Chesapeake Bay in the states of Delaware and Maryland in the United States. In the mid-17th century, mapmaker Augus ...

locally expected within a few years, and

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

's pending completion of the

Erie Canal The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east–west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigability, navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, ...

(first section now open) even while the various

Delaware and Hudson Canal The Delaware and Hudson Canal was the first venture of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, which would later build the Delaware and Hudson Railway. Between 1828 and 1899, the canal's barges carried anthracite coal from the mines of northeast ...

projects were in the news. In light of the big projects contemplated to link Philadelphia by canal with Pittsburgh and Erie, Pennsylvania and

Lake Erie Lake Erie ( ) is the fourth-largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and also has the shortest avera ...

, the Pennsylvania general court speedily approved a second canal proposal by Thomas Leiper, and the construction project was carried out by his son. The Leiper Canal was one of several privately funded canals such as the

, Union Canal and the

s that operated in Pennsylvania during the same boom era as when the Pennsylvania Canal System was constructed. In 1852, the families railway was reopened and the canal and locks were eventually filled in. Completed in 1828 to haul stone in flat-bottomed boats from his quarry near Springfield Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, to the navigable

at Eddystone, industrialist George Leiper financed the canal based on a dream of his father, using it when completed to replace the

animal power A working animal is an animal, usually domesticated, that is kept by humans and trained to perform tasks. Some are used for their physical strength (e.g. oxen and draft horses) or for transportation (e.g. riding horses and camels), while othe ...

between 1829 and 1852.

Configuration

Crum Creek's mouth is located at .—and perhaps uniquely ironic in history, was in turn replaced by the same railroad in 1852 when it was refurbished and reopened with new superior and now mature railroad technology. The system, which had three locks, replaced an

industrial railway An industrial railway is a type of railway (usually private) that is not available for public transportation and is used exclusively to serve a particular industrial, logistics, or military site. In regions of the world influenced by British r ...

built in 1810 by the elder Leiper when he failed to obtain a

right-of-way A right of way (also right-of-way) is a specific route that people, animals, vehicles, watercraft, or utility lines travel, or the legal status that gives them the right to do so. Rights-of-way in the physical sense include controlled-access h ...

charter A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the ...

for any canal; operated by his family, the

horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 mi ...

-drawn industrial railroad carried the families stone goods until the canal, which could carry heavier loads, received legislative blessings and was completed in 1828.

Recognition

The

Thomas Leiper Estate The Thomas Leiper Estate, also known as Avondale, is an historic, American estate that is located in Wallingford in Nether Providence Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. ...

was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1970. The Thomas Leiper House has been turned into a public museum in the well-to-do neighborhood of Wallingford.

Footnotes

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External links