A video presentation
written and narrated by
Larry Whyte
This program portrays life on and along the Schuylkill River, when the canal was a significant factor in the economic development of the region. The “journey” begins at Fairmount Dam in Philadelphia and ascends the navigation’s ingenious system of slackwater pools and hand-dug canals with its numerous locks, all the way to Port Carbon in Schuylkill County, where anthracite coal was mined and loaded on canal boats. The 108 images of scenes on the Schuylkill Navigation, spanning the waterway’s last fifty years of operation beginning about 1869. were reproduced from a private collection of post cards and photographs. Larry Whyte’s narration is based on his decades of research, which taps into numerous resources including historical reference works, original documents, maps, newspaper accounts, actual interviews with surviving boatmen, and considerable first-hand examination of the remnant structures of the Schuylkill Navigation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Larry Whyte attributes his interest in towpath canals to his boyhood explorations along the Conemaugh River where he grew up in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. Curiosity was aroused by some stone structures he found in the wild river margins that turned out to be remnants of the Western Division of the Pennsylvania Mainline Canal, long abandoned.
Years later his interest was rekindled after moving to the Phoenixville area, when he discovered the remains of Lock 60 at Black Rock Dam and the Oakes Canal still flowing through Mont Clare and Port Providence.
Subsequent research of the waterway led him to libraries and historical societies in Philadelphia, Reading, Port Clinton, Schuylkill Haven, Pottsville and many points in between to unearth sources of information about the canal. A trip to the state archives revealed the mother lode of Schuylkill Navigation Company records and the Gill maps. Whyte was aided in his search by Reading historian Earl J. Heydinger, an authority on Schuylkill River transportation.
His enthusiasm for the research project led him to join an ad hoc group known as the Schuylkill Canal Advisory Committee in Upper Providence Township that was exploring ways to preserve and improve the Oakes Canal segment, with its historic lock and the lock tender’s house for public use. In 1981, Whyte began speaking engagements within the locale to raise public awareness of the historic remnants and their value to the communities. At one talk he met Emanuel Berger, a Phoenixville attorney, who offered to show him his collection of postcards, many of which were photographs of the Schuylkill Navigation during its latter days of operation. The outcome of this meeting was a loan of the collection that Whyte photographed and assembled a slide show which he scripted a narration for. He then acquired a Kodak carousel projector and set out to enhance the public awareness campaign. Over the next several years he conducted nearly fifty speaking engagements in various locales for a number of organizations and met many people with connections to the old waterway, including Earl C. Schaffer, then in his 80s, who was the last engineer on the tug Dolphin. Others came forward with their own photographs and memories, and Whyte interviewed them.
With the advent of personal computers, Whyte digitized the slides and put together a PowerPoint program with the narration on text panels, which he donated to the Schuylkill Canal Association for use at the lock tender’s house in Mont Clare in 2005. In 2009 he produced a video version of the program with his recorded narration, which is presented here.