Union Canal
Union Township, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Following the Swatara Creek from Pine Grove to main line of the Canal at Water Works was a Feeder Branch. It was in use from 1832-1862. A portion of the Big Dam, a guard lock, and several lift locks remain on the other side of the Swatara.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
A feeder branch of the Union Canal followed the Swatara Creek from Pine Grove down to the main line at the Water Works, carrying both boats and the water that fed the larger system. It operated from 1832 to 1862, its route now marked by the surviving remains of the Big Dam, a guard lock, and several lift locks across the creek. These fragments trace a working piece of Pennsylvania's canal network.
Why it matters
The feeder branch reflects how canal builders engineered whole landscapes of dams and locks to sustain water transport, a vast effort largely erased by the coming of the railroads.
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Nearby & related markers
Union Canal
Swatara Township, PA · est. 1950
This stretch of the Union Canal reveals the engineering ingenuity that kept 19th-century canals flowing. Water gathered behind the Big Dam in Swatara Gap traveled by a branch canal to the Water Works, where wheels and steam pumps lifted it to the summit level near Lebanon. From that high point the canal fell away in both directions, east to Reading and west to Middletown.
Union Canal Tunnel
North Lebanon Township, PA · est. 1947
Beneath this ridge runs what the marker calls the first canal tunnel in America, bored in 1823 as part of the ambitious Union Canal. When the full canal opened in 1827, it linked the Schuylkill and Susquehanna watersheds, carrying boats of coal and freight across the Pennsylvania interior in the golden age before railroads. The waterway ran until 1884, and its stone-lined tunnel survives as a monument to early American engineering.
Union Canal
Jackson Township, PA · est. 1950
The Union Canal, in use from 1828 to 1884, linked the Susquehanna and Schuylkill watersheds across the rolling country of eastern Pennsylvania. Boats descended through a chain of locks from the canal's summit level near Lebanon down to the river at Reading. Remnants of one such lock still lie a short distance south along the Tulpehocken.
Union Canal
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The Union Canal grew from a vision as old as William Penn: a water link between the Susquehanna and Schuylkill rivers. Surveyed in 1762 and completed in 1828, it stretched from Middletown to Reading, carrying cargo through the heart of Pennsylvania until railroads made it unprofitable. It was abandoned in 1885, and traces of the old canal survive near Union Deposit a few miles south.