Manayunk

My lunch (and what turned out to be - final) break on the Manayunk Canal Towpath

Opened nearly two hundred years ago, in 1819, the Manayunk Canal was a key link in the hundred mile long Schuylkill Navigation system. Built to bring coal to the coastal cities and ports by way of canal barge, the waterway was soon overshadowed by the network of railroads then being built. After peaking in the 1850s, traffic on the canal dwindled each year with the final commercial boat passing in 1922.Read more