Danville Canal

Q-71

John Barnett built a canal here in 1794 that evolved from a millrace into a linchpin of the region’s transportation network. The Roanoke Navigation Company, a joint effort by Virginia and North Carolina to promote commerce by improving waterways, enhanced the 3/4-mile-long canal in the mid-1820s. Fifty enslaved laborers built three lower locks with basins and a stone upper lock and wing dam, facilitating travel around the falls of the Dan River and making coastal markets more accessible to the interior. Goods were transported on batteaux operated primarily by free and enslaved African Americans. The canal was repurposed in the 1880s to power Danville’s booming textile industry.

Department of Historic Resources, 2025

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Heirs of Halcott Towns vs. John Barnett, Chancery Cause, Index No. 1828-010, Library of Virginia. Alexandria Gazette, 7 June 1816. Richmond Enquirer, 4 March 1817, 20 Aug. 1819, 25 Nov. 1825. Annual Report of the President and Directors of the Board of Public Works to the General Assembly of Virginia (Richmond, 1818, 1829-1831, 1850). North Carolina Board of Internal Improvements, Fulton’s Report (1822, 1825). Map of Roanoke Navigation Co. Property in Danville, VA (1875). Danville Historical Society Archives. Danville Bee, 22 Feb. 1971. Danville Register & Bee, 4 July 1976. Peggy Jo Cobb Braswell, The Roanoke Canal: A History of the Old Navigation and Water Power Canal of Halifax County, North Carolina (Roanoke Rapids, NC: The Roanoke Canal Commission, Inc., 1987). Robert S. Smith, “Mill on the Dan: Riverside Cotton Mills, 1882-1901,” Journal of Southern History, vol. 21, no. 1 (Feb. 1955): 38-66