Canal Boats on the Old Miami Erie Canal

In April, 1964, Lloyd Tuttle, author of the "Backward Glances" column in the Crescent-News, focused on the canal boats and their part in the growth of Defiance.  We have few remnants of the canals left to actually view, and these photos are far from stellar, having come from old newspapers, but it is an attempt to keep them in our mind's eye.

"NOT MANY people living in Defiance today can remember what a canal boat looked like.
The above picture, which was submitted by Lon Harley...is one of a standard canal boat.  It tied up at the dock of the H. B. Tenzer Lumber Co., Perry St.

Most of the boats were painted white and had green shutters.  The boat was pulled by two mules, one in front of the other with a low towline.  A mule driver walked along with the head animal.  Another man steered the boat from the rear.
One of our presidents, Garfield, was a tow-boy in his youth.

The Miami and Erie Canal meant much to Defiance; in fact, it was the making of the town.  It ran from Toledo to Cincinnati.  At Junction, a few miles south of Defiance, the Wabash and Erie Canal branched off to pass through Logansport and other Indiana towns, on to Evansville, Ind. and finally the Ohio River."

Lloyd Tuttle continued:
"HERE is a canal boat just below what was known as the lower lock at the point where the old Miami and Erie Canal entered the Maumee River.  Just on the other side of the boat is a raft of logs.  When the timber business was at its height, there were rafts half way across the river.

In the background is the 'mule' bridge where the mules that pulled the boats crossed the Maumee here as the boats used the river from Defiance to the Independence Dam where there was a lock.  This lock and a short section of the canal have been restored to show the present generation just what the canal looked like.

It took six locks to get the boats through Defiance.  Going south, they had to be lifted and going north had to be dropped to different water levels.  There was a lock between the Maumee River and First St., another between Second and Third Sts., another between Third and Fourth Sts.  The next lock was at the Erie Mills, just south of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.  Then at the south city limits came the paper mills and Schooley locks.  It is said there was intense rivalry as to who would get through a lock first and many fights ensued.

The cargo occupied most of the space in a boat.  The captain and crew lived in a small cabin with a galley and bunk room."