(Conclusion of a series)
By Walter Lunt
For over 40 years in the mid-19th century, the Cumberland & Oxford Canal
followed the boundary of several towns in the Sebago Lake region, delivering
trade and commerce to a wide frontier-like corridor devoid of economic
prosperity. Its influence reached out into other settlements in both counties.
By all accounts, it was a smart and successful venture, although unprofitable
to stockholders, the canal company and some farmers along its route who
suffered property damage and land acquisition.
The C. & O. was busiest, some historians would say prosperous, from its
opening in 1830 to 1852 when toll collections reached over $16,000 – its
highest year.COURTESY OF WINDHAM
HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The threat that would eventually cast a death-knell on the canal arrived in
Portland in 1842 – the railroad - a mere 12 years into the life of the canal.
It was the Portland, Saco & Portsmouth Railway (shortly linking up to the
Boston and Maine). This first rail line actually helped the canal, as it opened
up an outlet for goods moving south; however, this new power-house of the
Industrial Revolution represented a unique psychological impact which was best
expressed by Prof. Joel Eastman in his early academic treatise, Carrying
Commerce to the Countryside:
“The railroad came to symbolize economic progress – a role it was ideally
suited for because the huge, iron, steam-powered engines running on iron rails
seemed to epitomize…power and speed. The locomotive came to be viewed as the
new cutting edge of economic growth and development. In contrast, the canal,
with its small, slow, horse-drawn wooden boats seemed slow and old fashioned –
more suited to the old pastoral era of the 18th century than to new urban
industrial age of the mid-19th century”
It is a common misnomer that railroad transportation was cheaper, per mile,
than canal shipping. As stated by Eastman, “…railroads were never less
expensive than the canal, but they were faster and operated the year around
(and on time), whereas the canal closed in the winter.”
By the 1850s, more railroad lines, including the Atlantic & St. Lawrence
(later Grand Trunk) had moved into the region, and they did siphon cargo from
the C. & O., which forced the canal company into bankruptcy. Unable to pay
off its numerous loans from the Canal Bank, the 27-year-old canal was sold in
1857 to private interests for $40,000 (less than 20 percent of the original
construction price of the canal).
The ultimate irony in this course of events is that in the year 1829, while the
C. & O. was under construction, it was a canal company in New York that
decided to import the first railroad engines to the U.S. (probably used to pull
canal boats over high terrain). So, the machine destined to kill canal travel
was introduced by a canal company.
The new owners of the C. & O. Canal in 1857 (a businessman and a
lawyer/politician) had to come up with ways make it pay. Their ideas were novel
and enterprising. But the Civil War and declining interest in the canal
destined its doom. Among their proposals for future use: 1) channel drinking
water from Sebago Lake to Portland; 2) conversion of the canal to a series of
fish hatcheries; 3) establishing a narrow-gauge railroad on the towpath. An
earlier idea, never realized, proposed cutting two-foot chunks of Sebago ice in
winter, storing the hard water underground in sawdust, then shipping it down
the canal for domestic use and shipping.
All ideas for reinventing the C. & O. Canal fell through, and efforts to
sell it off fizzled. A portion of its footprint in Portland was sold for the
construction of Commercial Street. Lumber and some manufactured items continued
to ship on the canal, but heavy maintenance costs and low income caused it to
descend into disrepair. The death knell came in 1868 when the Portland and
Ogdensburg (New York) Railroad (later the Mountain Division of Maine Central)
laid tracks that paralleled the canal all the way to the foot of Sebago Lake,
and later to Sebago Lake Station. Now, there was little need for cargo to be
canaled all the way to Portland for shipment. It was the end of the Cumberland
& Oxford Canal. Official operations ceased in 1872.
The distinction of being the last canal boat captain to sail any portion of the
Big Ditch, according to historian Herb Jones (Sebago Lake Land – 1949) goes to
Lewis P. Crockett in the canal boat Arthur Willis “to the store and mill of
Goff and Plummer at Middle Jam (North Gorham), about one mile from the entrance
to the canal,” after which Mr. Crockett continued deliveries of apples on
Sebago Lake.
Following the canal closure, the armada of canal boats (some had converted to
steam) operated on Sebago and Long Lakes, hauling cargo and passengers to
Sebago Lake Station to meet the train.
And there’s still another twist to our story. The Portland & Ogdensburg
Railroad failed to make a profit and eventually leased operations to Maine
Central Railroad.
There remain portions of the old C. & O. waterway that can still be seen
today, the most conspicuous being the channel that crosses Route 35 in Standish
just past the Presumpscot River. It has been raised and widened for use as a
feeder stream to the Eel Weir Dam. Two other locations that seem to capture a
vision of days gone by are at Babb’s Covered Bridge and at the remains of the
Gambo Powder Mills in South Windham. Adjacent to a small parking lot on the
Gorham side of Babb’s Bridge, there is a gully, grown in with trees and brush
(sadly, often sullied with litter); this is the old canal bed. At Gambo Mills,
a few hundred yards beyond the foot bridge going into Gorham, on the right, are
the remains of the canal, still with water, and the towpath.
Third grade students, studying Windham history, hear
the stories of the canal’s glory days from a tour guide and try to picture what
it all must have been like. On one such visit a few years ago, one young
visitor commented, “Wow, a lot sure happened here before I was born.” <
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