Towpath Trail

The inland commercial waterway, built between 1825 and 1832, carried passengers and goods from Lake Erie to the Ohio River, providing a crucial connection to the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River. Canal boats were towed by mules and when faced with an elevation change, utilized a series of sandstone locks that enabled boats to climb along the Continental Divide.  

The steepest section of the canal was between Akron and the Little Cuyahoga River where in a single mile, 15 locks were necessary to move boats along. The canal, which opened between Cleveland and Akron in 1827, can be directly credited with the growth of Akron. The city’s population swelled thanks to the bustling activity surrounding the tight bundle of canal locks. 

By 1880, the canal’s significance was in decline due to the introduction of railroads. After the flood of 1913, less than 100 years after the canal opened, the waterway was abandoned and largely forgotten about or ignored in the decades that followed. The concept of restoring the towpath as a multipurpose trail began to emerge in the 1980s, and the first section of the Towpath Trail opened in 1993.