The lock's downstream gates...
I'd later find out from the National Park Service's website that the Pawtucket Canal was built by one of the oldest limited liability corporations in the United States, 'The Proprietors of Locks and Canals on Merrimack River', incorporated in 1792 to build a canal between the Merrimack and Concord rivers which would allow vessels to take a shortcut around the mile-long Pawtucket Falls which has a drop of 32 feet. The canal was completed in 1796. At that time there was no Pawtucket Dam and no Lowell mills. The area presently known as Lowell was then known as East Chelmsford. This 1821 map A Plan of Sundry Farms at Patucket in the Town of Chelmsford drawn by J.G.Hale shows how the canal diverted vessels around the falls. A red arrow points to the Guard Locks that I paddled to...
Today the area surrounding the Guard Lock and Gatehouse is within Francis Gate Park...
On the downstream side of the Guard Lock House the Rates of Toll is posted...
Earlier, at the start of my Tuesday morning trip down the Merrimack's south side, I paddled towards a rapidly rising sun that would later break high temperature records in the area...
After passing under the Rourke Bridge and while retrieving a piece of flotsam I noticed a structure possibly related to the long-gone Middlesex Canal. Because I've long sought to find the exact spot where the canal joined with the Merrimack, I took note of the GPS coordinates with plans to return on Thursday (more on this later).
A small cove at the mouth of Black Brook now sports a small dock with what looks like an artificial-turf lawn making for an inviting spot to land...
Following my venture into the Pawtucket Canal I returned upriver along the river's north side which brought me past the beach and bath house along the Boulevard. Strange to see it looking abandoned...
Water levels in this stretch of the Merrimack are still on the high side giving the river an expansive look upriver...
Two days later, on Thursday, I again launched at Southwell Park and headed down the Merrimack River passing under the Rourke Bridge...
... enroute to the structure possibly related to the Middlesex Canal's river entrance/exit I'd noted on Tuesday. My GPS brought me to the spot...
Approaching closer, the culvert could be seen amidst a pile of timbers or possibly railroad ties...
Strongly suspecting this may be the spot where vessels long ago either entered or left the Middlesex Canal, I measured the distance between another culvert downriver at Black Brook and this spot. According to my GPS it's 1,954 feet which aligns with a 1911 map of Middlesex Village drawn by Hon. Samuel Hadley. Hadley's map shows the distance between Black Brook and the canal as roughly 2,000 feet. I also came across an article Locks in Lowell by J.J. Breen that appeared in American Canals Vol. XLIV No. 4 (Fall 2015). Breen wrote that "The location of the lower lock can be determined from the railroad culvert which replaced the iron bridge in 1860, identified from the Nashua and Lowell 1914 valuation plans as #63C, 5' x 5' stone, at station 1447 + 14 from Nashua. The culvert is drawn midway between the abutments of the former bridge. The Boston and Maine has a 4" x 4" concrete post identifying it as 27.37 miles from North Station. After lengthening by the rail road at both ends (since 1860), the culvert outlet is currently a 42" x 48" concrete opening, and the inlet is a junction box with a 5' diameter pipe at the end of a ditch on the south side of the railroad." According to Breen the granite blocks that the locks were built with were sold by Hon. Samuel Hadley to the Nashua and Lowell Railroad for use elsewhere around the time the culvert was installed. Breen's article also includes an aerial photograph showing the area where the canal's locks were located in relation to current streets and parking lots. If this information is correct the culvert is now located at the center of what was the canal's entrance/exit. On a Sunday morning in 1839 brothers John and Henry David Thoreau had their vessel lowered through the locks. Henry later described the experience: "By noon we were let down into the Merrimack through the locks at Middlesex, just above Pawtucket Falls, by a serene and liberal-minded man, who came quietly from his book, though his duties, we supposed, did not require him to open the locks on Sundays. With him we had a just and equal encounter of the eyes, as between two honest men." (BTW, my all-time favorite H.D.T. passage.)
I'm inclined to believe the culvert marks the spot I've long wanted to locate. The 21-mile long Middlesex Canal opened in 1803 and soon supplanted the Pawtucket Canal as a transportation route. By the 1840s the Middlesex Canal itself had been supplanted by the Boston and Lowell Railroad. Remaining traces of the Middlesex Canal in this area have been built over. The Pawtucket Canal, however, survives to this day due to its having been re-purposed for supplying water to power Lowell's many mills. Today the National Park Service preserves Lowell's canal system.
On my way back upriver I came across this vertical piece of rail with a board attached...
Overall a good week which included my first foray into the Pawtucket Canal, and my hopefully having located the mouth of the Middlesex Canal.
Trash from Tuesday...
Trash from Thursday...
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