Longstanding family tradition ends on the canal

Swain family decides not to open concession stand

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Gazette file photo After nearly a century of operations at Swain’s Lock on the C&O Canal, the Swain family decided to close its concession stand and boat rentals. In this photo from 2001, Fred Swain, who passed away that same year, (left) chats with his grandson, Matt Scheckels at the historic Potomac lockhouse that offered boat and bicycle rentals, fishing tackle and snacks to visitors of the national historic park.

From the C&O Canal’s construction in 1828, the Swains earned a livelihood on the 185-mile waterway.

Now, following more than a century of history on the canal, the Swain family has decided the time has come to end a longstanding family tradition.

‘‘It’s kind of a strange life, if you will,” Bert Swain said. ‘‘You just kind of live there and people come. They come walking by, they come take their dogs out. So you get to know just a ton of people.”

Swain said his father began running the family’s business of recreation and concessions out of the lockhouse in the 1930s — some 30 years after the family moved in at mile 16.6. Although his official day job was with the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, he also spent time taking canal visitors on guided hikes, fishing trips and boat rides.

Deciding to shut down the lockhouse’s boat and bicycle rentals and concession stand was a ‘‘tremendously difficult decision,” Swain said. ‘‘I have these fears that spirits of my ancestors are going to come back and haunt me for years on this.”

But from a business perspective, the lockhouse has ‘‘run its course,” he said.

‘‘When I was in high school, we would have almost 200 kids a day that would come in and out of there and go out in canoes or take bicycles out,” Swain said.

As time wore on, however, fewer customers turned out, fewer family members were available to work the operations and more floods began threatening life in the lockhouse, he said.

Still, Fred Swain, Bert Swain’s older brother, continued to live in the lockhouse and operated the rental and concessions business during summers until he passed away in 2001.

After that, Bert Swain worked with his niece to continue opening the lockhouse for summers, but eventually decided that ‘‘it was time.”

In the future, Swain said he hopes the National Parks Service will put the lockhouse to ‘‘good use,” whether it serves as an office for employees or a nonprofit organization connected with the canal, or a different use.

‘‘I’m really proud the way the house has been maintained and the way it is.... Hopefully, we’ll be able to find a group to put it to use in the way that kind of breathes some life back into it,” he said.

The Swains owned and operated boats on the busy canal after its construction. At the time, it was used to haul agricultural goods, coal and people between Cumberland and Washington, D.C.

By the 1900s, the Swains stopped boating and moved into the lockhouse at mile 16.6 of the canal that runs alongside the Potomac River, working as lock tenders until the canal closed in 1924.

Although the canal as they knew it had ceased operations, Swain said his grandfather and father continued living at the lockhouse.

‘‘My father absolutely loved it there,” said Swain, who spent his childhood at Swain’s Lock. ‘‘He felt it was the most beautiful place in the world.”

The National Parks Service acquired the abandoned canal in 1938 with intentions of restoring it, but with the start of World War II, only 22 miles of the canal were completed when restoration efforts were halted, said Sam Tamburro, historian for the C&O Canal National Historical Park.

Following the conclusion of the war, the National Parks Service began discussing plans to transform the canal into a scenic parkway, Tamburro said.

During this time, when the future of the canal was in limbo, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas spearheaded efforts to preserve the canal as a park.

In a move that is legendary to the canal’s history, Douglas led a hike through the entire length of the canal to persuade editors of the Washington Post, and ultimately the general public, that the route should be left as a park and not made a road. His efforts proved successful and in 1971, the canal was officially designated a national historical park.

‘‘My father was extremely close with Justice Douglas throughout those years,” Bert Swain said. ‘‘Justice Douglas, who was quite an outdoorsman, hiked on the canal and was close with the canal and people like my father.”

No other family has had such a longstanding historic tie to the canal as the Swains, Tamburro said.

‘‘It is sad to see a season begin on the C&O Canal without the Swains,” canal superintendent Kevin Brandt said in a press release. ‘‘The family has long been associated with the canal and they will be sorely missed.”