Hit the Road Travel Blog: Canal Fulton, Ohio

There are some vivid color houses in this old Ohio Canal town. Canal Fulton carries its name from the old Ohio Canal that used to connect the lake Erie and Cincinnati. Many small towns developed along the canal - some of them like the rubber city Akron survived and prospered, the others like Canal Fulton stopped their growth when the canal became obsolete. The canal needed a river to fill it. In most places the canal and the river run parallel to each other.

This is the Ohio canal - the river is behind the trees, seen at the upper right corner of the picture. The building in the same corner used to be a dry dock for repairing the ships that traveled on the canal

You can still board the last ship to sail on what remains of the great Ohio Canal. This is the boarding "port" and the ship is Helena III. We visited during the Canal days - a local festival and you can see the actors recreating some of the Civil War battles that took place in the past. The Helena III ship (seen at the back) is drawn by two hard working horses shown in the picture.

This is the ship departing from the Canal Fulton port and taken up to the Lock No 4 by the horses (seen on the right). Lock No 3 is in downtown Akron. We will take a walk along the canal to the Lock No 4, this is a view from a small bridge over the canal

This is the path that you must share with the horses pulling the ship, and as you can see from the sign, horses take priority. And there they are, the hard working horses huffing and puffing along the way. It is not an easy job to pull a ship full with tourists on the Ohio Canal...

You can see the rope attached to ship. Helena III of Canal Fulton, Ohio passing by in full glory.

We will march along the canal by houses and water lilly ponds, wishing we had a bike. It is 1,5 mile walk, so you had better be prepared.

And finally we reach Lock No 4, this how it looks - just wooden doors which were supposed to create an even water level between the different sections of the canal.