Johnston Tavern

Union Township, PA · est. 1948

Completed in 1834, this spot marked the northern terminus of the Beaver Division of Pennsylvania's state-built canal system. For a few years it served as a bustling head of navigation and shipping point, transferring goods where the waterway ended. Its heyday was brief: the opening of the 'Cross-Cut Canal' into Ohio in 1838 and the Erie Extension to Greenville in 1840 pushed the network onward, and this once-important harbor faded as the lines reached farther north and west.

Hermitage, PA · est. 1946

For three decades before the railroads swallowed its traffic, the Erie Extension Canal carried boats, iron, and goods across western Pennsylvania between Pittsburgh and the Great Lakes. Opened around 1840, it was a lifeline for the region's early iron industry, floating raw materials and finished metal along a slender ribbon of engineered water. By 1871 the age of rails had made it obsolete, and today a single surviving lock at Sharpsville stands as its stone memorial.

Mahoning Township, PA · est. 1948

Chartered by both Pennsylvania and Ohio in 1827, the 'Cross-Cut Canal' opened in 1838 to stitch two states' waterways together along the Mahoning River valley. By joining the Beaver Canal below New Castle it created a continuous water route linking Pittsburgh with the booming iron towns of Youngstown and Cleveland. For a generation it carried coal, iron, and produce until the railroad — which later followed the very same line — rendered it obsolete, and the canal fell out of use by 1872.

Sharpsville, PA

The Erie Extension Canal carried boats and cargo across northwestern Pennsylvania from 1840 to 1871, linking the Pittsburgh region toward the Great Lakes in the era before railroads reshaped American commerce. Its slack-water channels and locks floated the iron, coal, and goods that fed the growing furnaces of the Shenango and Mahoning valleys. Lock #10, a surviving guard lock at Sharpsville, is a rare physical remnant of that vanished waterway.