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C&O Canal Trust Helps Re-Open Towpath Link to Canal Towns and Visitors

Paw Paw, Md. – The reopening of the C&O Canal National Historical Park’s towpath near Paw Paw where a January 2013 rockslide just east of the Paw Paw Tunnel rendered a portion of the towpath impassable is cause for recreationalists and business owners alike to rejoice.
The towpath’s closure at Paw Paw required pedestrians and cyclists to detour over the mountain via the Paw Paw Tunnel Hill Trail, putting a damper on visitors’ plans—especially those of “thru-bikers” — and triggering cancellations along the entire length of the towpath. “As the owner of two businesses along the canal, it was my concern that cyclists would choose to shorten their trips to just riding the trail from Pittsburgh to Cumberland and not continuing onto Georgetown due to the slide,” said Penny Pittman of Hancock.
As evidenced by a 2008 Campos study of Trail Towns along the Great Allegheny Passage, recreational and trail-based visitation are inextricably linked to the economies of the local communities with 64.4% of businesses surveyed reporting that their “sales/revenue had increased at least somewhat as a direct result of the trail.” Specific to the C&O Canal, a National Park Service (NPS) study of local-level impacts of NPS visitor spending on local economies reported that the 3.9 million visitors to the C&O Canal in 2011 spent over $54 million in the vicinity of the Park. And with the number of visitors up to over 4.7 million in 2012, Park officials expect even higher visitation numbers in 2013, with the potential for yet higher trail-based revenue in the canal’s gateway communities.
Some of these small towns that feel the effects of fluctuations—both positive and negative—in trail-based tourism have formed a coalition called the Canal Towns partnership. Canal Towns, a program of the C&O Canal Trust, is an economic and community development initiative focused on uniting nine towns in the western part of the park—Point of Rocks, Brunswick, Harpers Ferry, Bolivar, Shepherdstown, Sharpsburg, Williamsport, Hancock and Cumberland—to learn from each other, cross-promote tourism opportunities, and have a stronger voice for their communities and the Park. At a February meeting of Canal Towns representatives, concerns were voiced about the negative impact towns were already seeing from the towpath’s closure at Paw Paw with Barbara Buehl, Director of Tourism in Allegany County, reporting that businesses in Cumberland were already receiving cancellations due to the towpath’s closure. Pittman recently restated Buehl and other Canal Town representatives’ concerns, saying, “As a small town located directly along the C&O Canal, Hancock businesses rely greatly and some businesses solely upon the thousands of bicyclists that support them each season.”
Understanding the economic consequences of an extended closure of the towpath on the Canal Towns, as well as the potential for additional damage to the resource in the event of subsequent slides, the C&O Canal Trust worked swiftly to secure a $5,000 donation from the Allegheny Trail Alliance (ATA) through Linda McKenna Boxx, president of ATA and an Advisory Board member of the Trust. The donation allowed the Park’s preservation and maintenance staff to work swiftly to perform geotechnical assessments, clear the towpath, stabilize the remaining rock, and install a rock-fall protection fence for the safety of visitors. “The Hancock Chamber of Commerce greatly appreciates the timely manner in which the National Park Service, along with the assistance of the C&O Canal Trust, took care of this issue,” said Pittman.
Thanks to the efforts of the C&O Canal Trust, the ATA, and the Park, the full 184.5 miles of the towpath are again open for pedestrian and bicycle traffic, only three months after the rockslide and just in time for the spring visitor season.