One hundred years ago wealthy visitors to the C&O Canal plodded up and down the narrow waterway in small, covered launch boats. The boats were smaller than the packet boats that ferried goods along the Canal but disappeared as the Canal itself became outmoded first by trains and then by automobiles.
If a plan being kicked around by officials within the C&O Canal National Historical Park takes hold those launch boats could reappear on the Canal in coming years. They are one of several considerations in an ongoing National Park Service study that is considering how to facilitate transportation of visitors to — and within — the lower 23 miles of the Canal.
Funded by a $500,000 grant from the Federal Highways Administration to consider alternative forms of transportation both to and within the park, the study began earlier this year and last month took the form of a two-day seminar that included National Park Service officials, private citizens, and members of a private engineering firm hired for the study to consider the various portions of the plan.
Among those considerations is how to more evenly distribute visitors to the lower 23 miles of the Canal, by far the most visited portion of 184-mile long park. Currently visitors mass at the Great Falls Tavern and, more problematically, at the Old Angler’s Inn entrance, where cars frequently overflow up and down MacArthur Boulevard.

THE POSSIBILITY of adding Rideon bus routes or creating shuttle buses from nearby dropoff points is under consideration but the easiest way to ease the pressure at those two points would be to through new signage to encourage visitors to utilize other nearby entrance points like the one at Carderock, which rarely approaches capacity, said Brian Carlstrom, the deputy superintendent of the park.
Rewatering the entire lower 23 miles of the Canal is also being explored as a way to enhance the historical nature of the park and thereby attract more visitors, but the hurdles to doing so are substantial.
"From Georgetown to Great Falls there are 20 locks. Who’s going to operate 20 locks? Who’s going to maintain 20 locks?" said park maintenance supervisor John Umberger. And it’s more than just the locks. Eleven pedestrian bridges crossing the canal would have to be removed, the breach at Old Angler’s would have to be repaired and the Canal would have to be dredged. At approximately $1 million per mile, the dredging itself could be cost prohibitive, said Umberger, and Carlstrom said that of the 24 locks between Georgetown and Seneca — the lower 23 miles of the park — at most four are fully operational right now. Restoring them wouldn’t be cheap and the total cost of rewatering the lower 23-mile stretch would be several million dollars, though exactly how many is unclear, Carlstrom said.

PARK OFFICIALS at last month’s seminar were enthused by the possibilities of the launch boats, which could be used in interpretive contexts as well as to transport visitors short distances along the canal, but others were less than enthusiastic.
Nancy Long, a lifelong resident of Glen Echo, is a member of the C&O Canal Association, a private support group for the park. When the C&O Canal National Historical Park was created in 1971, Long was the first chairman of the C&O Canal Advisory Commission, a body that comprises private representatives from around the state of Maryland.
Maintaining the historical feel of the park is vital, said Long, and adding these launch boats, which park officials said could be powered by some type of quiet electric or battery-powered motor, doesn’t match the park’s historical mission.
"You don’t want recreation to become something more important [than the historical] elements of the park but there seems to be a direction taking us more towards recreation and disturbing the balance of what there is now," said Long. "An engine is an engine, it makes a noise… [that is] part of what it does."
A report on the findings of the alternative transportation study could be ready by the end of the year, said Carlstrom, though when — or if — the conclusions are put into effect is difficult to determine. The park still needs to update its general management plan that was created in 1976 — and called for updates every 10 years — but the perpetually underfunded and understaffed park likely won’t get that ball rolling for at least another two years, Carlstrom said. With its staff largely tied up working on six projects funded through $18 million of federal stimulus funds — the park’s annual budget barely tops $9 million — there are other things to be done first.
"That’s why we’re at the conceptual stage," said Carlstrom.
Matt Logan, president and founder of the C&O Canal Trust, the park’s private financial support organization, said that the status quo isn’t a viable long-term option and that he is hopeful some of these ideas can be put into play.
"As with most big far-reaching things there’s a lot of time for it to unravel, but then again some of these ideas could get implemented," Logan said. "It will be interesting to see how it plays out."