Union Canal
Penn Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
The canal, at this point, followed the north bank of the Tulpehocken. A dam, two locks, and a mule bridge made it possible for boats to cross Northkill Creek. Nearby were grist mills, a lime kiln, and a tannery.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Here the Union Canal ran along the north bank of the Tulpehocken, where a dam, two locks, and a mule bridge allowed boats to cross Northkill Creek. The surrounding cluster of grist mills, a lime kiln, and a tannery shows how a canal was never just a ditch of water but the spine of a small industrial community that grew up along its banks.
Why it matters
This stretch captures how nineteenth-century canals became engines of local industry, drawing mills and trades to their locks in the decades before the railroad age.
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Related events
- · Union Canal operation, 1828-1884
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Union Canal
Bern Township, PA · est. 1950
Operating from 1828 to 1884, the Union Canal linked the Schuylkill River at Reading with the Susquehanna at Middletown, stitching together eastern Pennsylvania's waterways in the great canal-building era. Boats hauled coal, grain, and goods along its towpath, a stretch of which can still be traced southeast of here beside the Tulpehocken Creek.
John A. Shulze
Marion Township, PA · est. 1951
John Andrew Shulze served as Pennsylvania's governor through the 1820s, a moment when young American states were racing to knit themselves together with roads, canals, and other public works. Under his administration the Commonwealth launched an ambitious program of internal improvements, the kind of canal-and-turnpike building that would soon reshape Pennsylvania's economy. Born in 1775 in the parsonage behind Christ Lutheran Church, in the German-settled countryside of Berks County, Shulze rose from a Lutheran pastor's household to the statehouse.
Skew Bridge
Reading, PA · est. 1951
By the 1850s Pennsylvania was crisscrossed with railroads hungry for engineering that could carry tracks over roads and streams at awkward angles. A skew bridge solves that problem by setting its arch on a slant, forcing every stone to be cut on a precise spiral so the whole span holds without a central keystone. Designed by Richard Osborn for the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad in 1857, this stone arch was long admired as one of the finest examples of the form in the country.
Reading Railroad Massacre
Reading, PA · est. 1993
The economic depression of the 1870s brought wage cuts and rising anger across America's railroads, and in July 1877 that anger erupted into the nation's first great national strike. In Reading, workers whose pay had been slashed blocked the tracks, and on July 23 militia fired into the unarmed crowd, killing ten people before federal troops moved in to reopen the line. The bloodshed here was one episode in a wave of upheaval that swept the country's rail network that summer.