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Water was the most effective mode of transportation in the early 1800s. Canals were dug, by hand, to augment river trade. The Farmington Canal was 84 miles long, from New Haven, Connecticut to Northampton, Massachusetts, using 28 locks to change elevations of the waterway (a total of 220 feet). After 20 years of use (1828-1848), the canal's use was abandoned for a speedier railroad, the tracks parallel to the canal route. One lock remains, number 12, in Cheshire CT, shown here in a three-exposure HDR image. Locks were 12 feet wide and eighty feet long; the canal about twenty feet wide and four feet deep. I was standing in the canal bed for this photo.