Mule Barn - Four Locks - C and O Canal
by Susan Rissi Tregoning
Title
Mule Barn - Four Locks - C and O Canal
Artist
Susan Rissi Tregoning
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
The Mule Barn at Four Locks has been reconstructed as a testament to the hard-working mules along the C&O Canal.
Mules were the preferred engines for the canal boats. During the Canal's peak years of the 1870s, approximately 3000 mules were working on the C&O Canal. Most canal boat captains treated their mules like pets and cared for them like part of the family. They were well-fed, eating a diet of corn, hay, and oats. The mules needed to be shod about every other trip to Cumberland, and they were harnessed slantwise or one behind the other; they pulled the boat straighter this way than they did when harnessed abreast.
A boat captain typically owned four mules. Two worked while the other two rested in a Mule Stable on the bow of the barge. A workday for a pair of mules, known as a trick, was a six-hour shift covering about 16 miles while pulling a 90 x 14-foot barge carrying something like 120 tons of coal along the Canal.
The Canal season was about eight months long. Once the Canal froze solid, nothing could move. During the winter, most captains preferred to send their mules to a Mule Barn and pay a mule tender to care for them.
Boat Captains preferred mules over horses because they had a horse's size and temperament and a donkey's strength and endurance. They were less prone to illness and injury, had longer life spans and work lives, and were cheaper to purchase. More sure-footed than horses, mules were less likely to trip and injure themselves when pulling extremely heavy loads.
The 184-mile one-way trip took about four days. Mule drivers, typically children, walked the mules down the towpath.
Copyright 2021 Susan Rissi Tregoning
Uploaded
January 21st, 2021
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