Canal Quarters, a program that preserves and provides public use of historic lockkeepers’ houses along the 184.5-mile Chesapeake & Ohio (C&O) Canal, received the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation’s Chairman’s Award for Achievement in Historic Preservation in a Capitol Hill ceremony on March 7.
The Canal Quarters program was created and operates through a partnership with the C&O Canal National Historical Park and the non-profit C&O Canal Trust.
The program, which began in 2009 and has shown an increase in users each year, to date has restored six historic lockkeepers’ houses along the canal towpath. They are available for overnight stays that provide immersive interpretive experiences for the public. The lockhouses, whose origins date back 170 years, are interpreted to present different periods in the life and history of the canal, including its operation from 1820 to 1924, as well as efforts for its preservation through the 1950s. The program both restores and puts to contemporary use historic properties. The park receives about 5 million users annually, many of them hikers and bikers, and the restored lockhouses are made available to the public through the Canal Quarters program.
To learn more about the Canal Quarters program, visit http://www.canaltrust.org/quarters/. To learn more about the C&O Canal National Historical Park, visit http://www.nps.gov/choh/index.htm.