In times past, travelers made their way along the Whitewater Canal on horse pulled barges. It was, in the mid 1800s, a way for merchants and farmers to transport their products to market and for others to journey to the small towns and villages that dotted the Indiana landscape.

The Whitewater Canal, which, started in 1836 and finished ten years later, connected Hagerstown, Indiana to Cincinnati, Ohio, a 101 mile trip.

But the mania for building canals in Indiana was short lived. Like most of the canals in America, with the advent of the railroad as well as better roads, much of the Whitewater Canal disappeared, covered over by the tracks for trains from Indianapolis; Cincinnati Railroad or were forgotten and just drifted shut over the years.

But two things saved the stretch of the canal that traversed through tiny Metamora, Indiana, about an hour’s drive southeast of Indianapolis.

The canal remained open to be used as a source of water for the town’s 1845 grist mill.