Danville Canal

Danville County · dedicated 2025 · 424 Memorial Drive

John Barnett built a canal here in 1794 that evolved from a millrace into a linchpin of the region’s transportation network. The Roanoke Navigation Company, a joint effort by Virginia and North Carolina to promote commerce by improving waterways, enhanced the 3/4-mile-long canal in the mid-1820s. Fifty enslaved laborers built three lower locks with basins and a stone upper lock and wing dam, facilitating travel around the falls of the Dan River and making coastal markets more accessible to the interior. Goods were transported on batteaux operated primarily by free and enslaved African Americans. The canal was repurposed in the 1880s to power Danville’s booming textile industry.

David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

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under a mile from where William Gabby lived in the 1760s

what this marker records spans 1777 to 1789, overlapping William Gabby's years here

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