Qualla: Monocacy Aqueduct

Monocacy Aqueduct: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Preservation Maryland, CC BY-SA 2.0. Thomas Walter loved the South. He also loved the Monocacy Aqueduct more. In September 1862, as Confederate General D.H. Hill marched toward Antietam with orders to destroy the largest aqueduct on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, Walter - keeper of Lock 27 and a Confederate sympathizer himself - talked the general out of it. Drain the canal instead, Walter argued, and you achieve the same military objective without reducing 438 feet of quartzite masonry to rubble. Hill agreed. The aqueduct survived that day, survived a second demolition attempt days later when Confederate soldiers found the stone too hard to drill, survived Hurricane Agnes in 1972, and still stands where it has stood since 1833 - carrying the ghost of a canal across the Monocacy River in Frederick County, Maryland, just upstream from where the Monocacy empties into the Potomac.

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Image: Preservation Maryland | CC BY-SA 2.0

Monocacy Aqueduct: Quartzite from the Mountain

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikereichold, CC BY-SA 2.5. Building the Monocacy Aqueduct was a lesson in persistence. The first contract went to Hovey and Legg in August 1828, but the project defeated them. The contract passed to Asher Osbourn, who fared no better. By the end of 1830, Byrne and Lebaron held the work, and they would see ...

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Image: Mikereichold | CC BY-SA 2.5

Monocacy Aqueduct: The Lockkeeper's Bargain

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit C&O Canal NHP, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Civil War turned the C&O Canal into a strategic artery. The Union used it to move troops and war materials along the border between Maryland and Virginia, making every aqueduct, lock, and towpath a potential target. Confederate sympathizers were scattered among the canal empl...

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Image: C&O Canal NHP | CC BY-SA 2.0

Monocacy Aqueduct: Flood and Restoration

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NPS, Public domain. The aqueduct endured the Civil War intact, but time and water proved more patient adversaries. Hurricane Agnes swept through the Potomac watershed in June 1972, inflicting serious damage on canal structures that had been deteriorating since the canal's commercial closure in 1924....

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Image: NPS | Public domain

Monocacy Aqueduct: What Remains at the River

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Loneshieling, CC BY-SA 4.0. Walk the towpath today and the aqueduct appears much as canal boatmen would have seen it in the 1830s - seven arches of pale quartzite spanning the Monocacy River, the waterway dry now but the walls intact, the parapet still wide enough for a mule team. Near the parking lot stand...

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Image: Loneshieling | CC BY-SA 4.0