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 ing. It is believed that as early as 1750 a canal or sluice was dug in Orange County, New York, by Lieutenant-governor Colder for the transportation of stone. The earliest planned lock canal in the provinces was the Schuylkill and Susquehanna, surveyed from the Schuylkill River near Reading, Pennsylvania, to Middletown on the Susquehanna in 1762. Work on this canal was not begun until 1791, but only four miles were opened by 1794, when the work again paused. Not until 1821 was it resumed, and the canal was completed in 1827 under the name of the Union Canal. It became a division of the later Pennsylvania Canal.

The second canal survey in the American colonies was of a route between Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware River in 1764. A new survey was made of this proposed canal in 1769, under the auspices of the American Philosophical Society; it was not, however, until 1804 that work was commenced on this canal—the Chesapeake and Delaware, as it was known—and this was soon suspended. The route was re-surveyed in 1822 and completed, thirteen and one-half miles long, in 1829.