Union Canal Tunnel
North Lebanon Township, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Monument to first canal tunnel in America stands not far up this road. Built in 1823 under this ridge, the tunnel may be reached by a short walk down the hill on either side. The Union Canal was opened in 1827, and operated until 1884.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The Union Canal tunnel was a pioneering feat of the canal era that briefly stitched Pennsylvania's rivers together and helped power the young nation's commerce.
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Related events
- · Construction of the Union Canal
Themes & tags
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
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
Union Township, PA · est. 1950
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.
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.