I believe this is sort of timely. Members of the Canal Society of Ohio CSO and Stark Parks are sitting down to discuss the identity, location and status of the canal artifacts in Stark County that need to be preserved, restored or signed. There are only three of those big sluices that I am aware of on the northern division of the Ohio Canal.
It was a fascinating place and sported a long wooden crib dam, stone dam abutments and a large basin. A guard lock was constructed about a half mile below the crossing and a short sidecut, outlet lock and a refurbished mill dam allowed boats to exit the Ohio Canal, cross the Tuscarawas River and enter the New Philadelphia Lateral Canal through a guard lock.
I was shown all this in the early s by my long-time class mate and canal buddy, Richard Williams. The early s attempted rebuild of this division of the Ohio Canal, reduced the size of the basin a bit, replaced the upper stone dam abutment with a concrete big sluice, removed the guard lock, and rebuilt the dam. And by the time I first saw this area, the dam was gone, but any number of very interesting artifacts remained.
Then, the plastics company that owned the area sold to a larger concern and access to this fascinating area was denied. I had sent a letter to Arizona Chemical in mid December of asking for permission to get onto their water treatment facility property and check out the remains of the crossing. I called Randy after the holidays and we agreed to wait until there was a lull in the snowfall.
I called him back on January 20th. We set an appointment up for the next day, the 21st. I got to the water treatment plant off of State Route 39 about and Randy rolled up in his truck about He invited me into the truck, so I got my 35mm camera and two throw-away cameras and got in. We drove down an old roadway that was in the canal bed. There was no longer a real trail, but I knew the artifacts were on the track of a power line so we kept going in a general direction toward Sugar Creek.
