Intracoastal Waterway - Initial Suggestions

Initial Suggestions

The improvement of the country's natural transportation routes was a major concern for all geographic regions as well as from a national perspective of building and binding the nation together; these improvements were also a source of major political division concerning where and how improvements should be developed, as well as who should pay, and who should do the work. In 1808, the first federal government report on existing, possible and likely avenues of transportation improvement was presented; it included much of the distance where and in the manner that the ICW now traverses the Atlantic coast. At the request of the Senate in 1807, Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin presented an overall plan for future transportation developments of national importance and scope. Along with inland east-west improvements, Gallatin's north-south improvements included the following:

"The map of the United States will show that they possess a tide water inland navigation, secure from storms and enemies, and which, from Massachusetts to the southern extremity of Georgia, is principally, if not solely, interrupted by four necks of land. These are the Isthmus of Barnstable, that part of New Jersey which extends from the Raritan to the Delaware, the peninsula between the Delaware and the Chesapeake, and that low and marshy tract which divides the Chesapeake from Albemarle Sound. ...

Should this great work, the expense of which, as will hereafter be shown, is estimated at about three millions of dollars, be accomplished, a sea vessel entering the first canal in the harbor of Boston would, through the bay of Rhode Island, Long Island Sound, and the harbor of New York, reach Brunswick on the Raritan; thence pass through the second canal to Trenton on the Delaware, down that river to Christiana or Newcastle, and through the third canal to Elk River and the Chesapeake, whence, sailing down that bay and up Elizabeth River, it would, through the fourth canal, enter the Albemarle Sound, and by Pamlico, Core, and Bogue sounds, reach Beaufort and Swansborough in North Carolina. From the last-mentioned place, the inland navigation, through Stumpy and Toomer's sounds, is continued until a diminished draught of water, and by cutting two low and narrow necks, not exceeding three miles together, to Cape Fear River, and thence by an open but short and direct run along the coast is reached that chain of islands between which and the main the inland navigation is continued, to St, Marys along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. It is unnecessary to add any comments on the utility of the work, in peace or war, for the transportation of merchandise or the conveyance of persons.

While Gallatin discussed the details of engineering, construction and costs, including the national benefits to accrue from lowered transportation costs between state markets and internationally, his full $20 million plan spread over ten years was never approved. That is not to say his plan was never implemented however, for with experience in the War of 1812, shortly thereafter and its attendant British blockade, the continued need for such facility was soon highlighted. Since Gallatin had based his principal proposals on the known advantageous natural geographic features of the country, many of his proposals were the locations of future navigation improvements surveyed, authorized and constructed starting with the 1824 General Survey Act and the first of many pieces of rivers and harbors legislation, as well by individual state-built improvements. Since these 1824 acts, the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has had responsibility for navigation waterway improvements and maintenance. All four proposed sections of Gallatin's intracoastal plan were eventually built; the Delaware and Raritan Canal was later abandoned for a better alternative, but the Cape Cod Canal remains in operation, and the Delaware and the Dismal Swamp portions still form part of the larger present day Intracoastal Waterway.