With growing settlement east of the Appalachian Mountains and into the Ohio Valley, a rapidly expanding United States needed better and more efficient ways to transport raw goods to the business centers on the Atlantic and finished goods to the growing frontier. Canal works sprung up where feasible, most notably the Erie Canal from Albany, New York to Buffalo, and the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal from the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington D.C. to Cumberland, Maryland. Alexandria city merchants, sensing a loss of business to its upstream competitor, pushed forward with…
