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The Bay State Monthly — Volume 2, No. 2, November, 1884 by Various
page 70 of 114 (61%)
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL.

BY LORIN L. DAME, A.M.


The curious traveller may still trace with little difficulty the line of
the old Middlesex canal, with here and there a break, from the basin at
Charlestown to its junction with the Merrimac at Middlesex village. Like
an accusing ghost, it never strays far from the Boston & Lowell
Railroad, to which it owes its untimely end.

At Medford, the Woburn sewer runs along one portion of its bed, the Spot
pond water-pipes another. The tow-path, at one point, marks the course
of the defunct Mystic Valley Railroad; at others, it has been
metamorphosed into sections of the highway; at others, it survives as a
cow-path or woodland lane; at Wilmington, the stone sides of a lock have
become the lateral walls of a dwelling-house cellar.

Judging the canal by the pecuniary recompense it brought its projectors,
it must be admitted a dismal failure; yet its inception was none the
less a comprehensive, far-reaching scheme, which seemed to assure a
future of ample profits and great public usefulness. Inconsiderable as
this work may appear compared with the modern achievements of
engineering, it was, for the times, a gigantic undertaking, beset with
difficulties scarcely conceivable to-day. Boston was a small town of
about twenty thousand inhabitants; Medford, Woburn, and Chelmsford were
insignificant villages; and Lowell was as yet unborn, while the valley
of the Merrimac, northward into New Hampshire, supported a sparse
agricultural population. But the outlook was encouraging. It was a
period of rapid growth and marked improvements. The subject of closer
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