Controversial canal plan led to powerful industries

One of Augusta's most scenic landmarks almost wasn't.

The Augusta Canal, whose hydropower catapulted the city from economic decline into an industrial empire, was conceived in 1844, when leading residents launched a controversial campaign that would change the city forever.

That September, Henry H. Cumming, an officer of Georgia Railroad & Banking Co., teamed with John P. King to finance an engineering study for a proposed seven-mile canal.

The task was assigned to John E. Thomson, Georgia Railroad's chief engineer, who devised a plan to divert water from the Savannah River seven miles above Augusta, where it would flow downstream into the city. In the winter of 1845, Mr. Cumming unveiled his vision for an industrial corridor to compete with larger communities in the Northeast. In March, Augusta City Council created a canal commission to oversee the project.

A debatable plan

One of the first controversies emerged in May 1845, when opposition to its planned route through the city caused the City Council to re-examine the project. A section from Beaverdam Creek to East Boundary was abandoned in favor of a less expensive route, discharging upstream at Hawk's Gully.

Jim Wylie, an architect, historian and National Park Service consultant, outlined the situation in a study published by Canal History agreed; both resigned in protest. Later, one would sue.''

The next controversy, Mr. Wylie wrote, emerged in the Georgia Legislature when efforts to incorporate Augusta Canal Co. -- perceived as a plan by the rich to exploit the poor -- were passed after a long battle. Subsequent battles evolved over plans to modify the structure, over the perceived potential for flooding and over use of city tax dollars to help finance the project. One lawsuit, challenging the city's authority to build the waterway, went to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The city won.

Contractors began the project in 12 segments, some under way simultaneously. On Nov. 23, 1846, water flowed into the 40-foot-wide, 5-foot-deep canal.

A rising power

Augusta's canal was modeled after the canal system in Lowell, Mass., where engineers built canals to amplify water power on the Merrimack River near Boston in the early 1800s.

James W. Jones, the editor of Augusta's Chronicle & Sentinel , endorsed the idea, editorializing that the city needed a canal as a means of economic salvation and to compete with the North.

"The man who would transfer such a system as Lowell's to the Southern States, with its accompanying blessings, would do more for the benefit of our people than have all the politicians since the days of Washington,'' Mr. Jones wrote.

Augusta -- soon a rising industrial power -- became known as the "Lowell of the South,'' with so many industries that the canal became a tourist attraction with manufacturing plants reproduced on postcards.

Augusta Manufacturing Co. was the first to utilize the new power source.

Organized in 1847 by a former mayor, the firm employed 200 workers who produced 32,000 yards of cloth weekly. Its building was demolished in 1960.

In the Augusta Canal's heyday during the mid-1800s, an estimated 25,000 bales of cotton a year moved along its narrow banks, either by mule-drawn barge or by Petersburg boats -- peculiar, cigar-shaped cargo boats that plied the waterway.

The wooden vessels were named for Petersburg, a now-defunct city above Augusta at the confluence of the Broad and Savannah rivers. The town's remains are beneath Thurmond Lake.

A piece of history

The canal and its dozens of industries helped move the South away from dependence on the industrialized North. And when the Civil War broke out, it attracted a major Confederate industry: the great Powderworks.

Col. George Rains built the plant in Augusta because of its railways and its canal. The factory produced powder, grenades, percussion caps and other material and was the only permanent structure built by the Confederacy. Its chimney remains as a monument to the past.

Today, the 163-year-old canal is a National Heritage Area and one of the region's most significant tourist attractions, with miles of hiking and bicycle trails, a visitors center and a series of historic, redeveloped buildings and amenities.

And for his efforts in establishing the canal, Mr. Cumming -- eventually -- was rewarded by Augusta City Council with a sterling silver pitcher and goblets engraved with scenes from the Rae's Creek Aqueduct.