Potomac Company was created in 1785 to make improvements to the Potomac River and improve its navigability for commerce.
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10 Facts About Potomac Company
2.
The Potomac Company's achievement was not just to be an early example, but of being significant in size and scope of the project, which involved taming a mountain stream fed river with icing conditions and unpredictable freshets .
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3.
Potomac Company built five skirting canals around the major falls of the Potomac opening the river to commercial bulk goods traffic from the Chesapeake Bay mouth to Cumberland, Maryland in the Cumberland Narrows notch leading west across the Alleghenies, where it intersected Nemacolin's Trail near Braddock's Road, later made the first National Road, today's U S Route 40.
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4.
Potomac Company had been championed by prominent men of both Maryland and Virginia, including George Washington, who was its first president, as well as an investor in the company.
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5.
The project to improve the Potomac Company was seen as a major opportunity strategically and economically .
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6.
Potomac Company originally wanted to hire only free labor, but due to the shortage of labor, the directors hired free, indentured, and slave labor to build the locks and canals and deepen the river.
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8.
Failure of the Potomac Company to make the Potomac River navigable does not mean that that project was without serious economic implications.
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9.
The failure of the Potomac Company was largely attributed to a lack of federal support and oversight, and the U S government was much more careful to support interstate infrastructure projects after that.
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