Sandy & Beaver Canal Blog

A page to keep you updated on what's happening with the canal and with the website. Please e-mail me with any news you would want made known here.

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09/02/05 - With Butch Seitz, photographed close-ups of different aspects of Lusk's Lock. It may have to get its own section after this. We looked for mason's marks on the stone after an article in Towpaths but were unable to find any. We also took pictures at Lock #24 and the Big Tunnel.

07/28/05 - Photographed the broken remnants of the original lockplate from Lusk's Lock. Thanks to John Horn for showing this to me and to Doug Bacso for helping me with the lighting.

04/17/05 - Did my annual "Trillium Hike" at the state park. Lots of pictures of trillium and bluets, as well as pictures of the wall collapse at Grey's Lock that happened sometime over the winter. I also searched unsuccessfully for a log mill foundation that Doug Bacso thought might be up one of the side valleys. It could very well be that I was up the wrong valley.

03/16/05 - With Butch Seitz, photographed the Cold Run Reservoir, and several sites on the Western Division including: Dam #2 in Minerva, Dam #6 and the guard lock in Magnolia, the aqueduduct embankment opposite Bolivar, and others.

02/08/05 - With Butch Seitz, checked out the areas where Furnace Hollow meets Beaver Creek and also where the canal crossed Darner Road east of Lisbon.

01/29/05 - Visited and photographed Lusk's Lock after a snowfall.

01/26/05 - Revised and expanded the Echo Dell / Sprucevale section.

01/25/05 - Read in the Canal Society of Ohio Newsletter that the Stark County Parks District announced in October 2004 that they will be purchacing the Elson Mill in Magnolia, the adjacenct raceway, and Lock 24 (West). Presumably this means the guard lock at Dam 6, which Gard & Vodrey called Lock 24, since the lock at Dam 6 is what controls the water flow for the raceway behind the mill. According to the information on the 2004 CSO Sring Tour of the Western Division, this is an unnumbered guard lock. Lock 24 is just up channel from the mill.

01/17/05 - Purchased on Ebay a copy of ELKTON & ELKRUN TWP. HISTORY by Beatrice Westover. It was published in 1980 and has a lot of information about the canal, some of which is probably true. It has no table of contents, no index, and is not in chronological (or any logical) order. But it is a quaint and fascinating collection of oral histories which seems to have some gems worth mining. I'll be adding some to the site, with warnings about the needed grain of salt, as time goes by.

01/11/05 - Got an e-mail from a lady named Sandy Beaver who lives in Phoenix. She said that she was searching the Internet for other people named Beaver when she saw www.sandybeaver.com pop up in the search engine. She was excited at first, then disappointed, then amused, and thought she would share it with me.

01/05/05 - I've been emailing back and forth a lot the past week with Craig Wetzel from East Liverpool. His interest lies mainly in the paper mills at the lower end of the canal. He has supplied me with some information that I had not seen before on Job Harvey and the mills. He also supplied me with a copy of the 1834 Congressional hearings on the Sandy & Beaver Canal. It is interesting reading that I will copy and make into pdf's for publication in the Documents section sometime soon.