Danville Canal

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.

Department of Historic Resources, 2025