ENVIRONMENT : Herculean Effort Restores Historic C&O; Canal Park

The flood swept through with a ferocity that has already become legend.

The Potomac River, which normally tops out at 4 feet at Little Falls, just upstream from Washington, D.C., crested at 22 feet.

“I’ve heard it was the fastest flood in recorded nature,” said Paul Rosa, executive director of the Potomac Conservancy, a nonprofit land trust that seeks to preserve undeveloped areas.

That may be an exaggeration. But the repair work that followed along the historic C&O; Canal and its 8-foot-wide towpath, which parallels the Potomac from Cumberland, Md., in the Appalachian Mountains southeast to Washington, may be setting some sort of record.

In early January, more than 2 feet of snow blanketed the East Coast. Fed by heavy rainfall later that month, the snowmelt inundated the region and left 80% of the 184 1/2-mile C&O; Canal National Historic Park under water.

Just as the arrival of the railroads doomed the commercial prospects of the thousands of canals that carried cargo and passengers in the 19th century, the attack by the forces of the rugged winter shut down much of the towpath.

The torrents uprooted trees, tore the gates off canal locks and ripped stone from masonry, some of which had stood the test of nearly 170 Eastern winters. And in the branches of the trees that withstood the onslaught, shards of ice hung where the waters had deposited them, 6 feet above the towpath.

The canal, where mules once pulled boats laden with coal from Appalachian mines and wheat from Montgomery County fields, now skirts subdivisions and mini-mansions. Throughout the year the towpath carries hikers, joggers (among them, at one time, President Carter), cyclists, dog walkers and bird-watchers.

All were banished by the winter ravages.

A Herculean effort followed, bringing as many as 10,000 volunteers to help clear storm debris, shovel gravel and rebuild masonry. Contractors have donated their services, with equipment rental companies donating dump trucks and earthmovers.

Now, as spring settles in, much of the towpath has been reopened. President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore visited it Monday to take part in additional cleanup activities on Earth Day.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt hiked a 61.3-mile stretch over three days last week, from Harper’s Ferry, W. Va., at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers to the canal’s terminus in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood. His purpose was to draw attention to the private efforts that brought the park back to life and the need for much more help for the park and other national treasures.

Referring to contributions from such locally based corporations as Mobil Oil, Marriott International, Gannett Co. and the Potomac Electric Power Co., he mused: “Maybe it’s time for some company to step forward and say, ‘We’re going to sponsor the restoration of the Washington Monument.’ ”

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As for the job at hand, the National Park Service estimates that $20 million is needed to complete work along the canal. Congress has appropriated $2 million, individuals and companies have donated $600,000 and more is being sought by the private National Park Foundation. The Clinton administration is asking for $16 million in a supplemental appropriation.

Babbitt’s hike also was intended as a celebration of the canal’s role in the westward march of America. Work on the canal’s forerunner, the Patowmack Canal, began in 1802--initial surveying was done many years before by George Washington--and traffic grew for seven decades after the C&O; was opened in the early 1830s.

Until the competition of the railroads overtook the boats that could move only as fast as two or three mules could pull them, the canal was the nation’s thoroughfare, carrying as many as 700 boats at a time. Dreamers saw it as the first link in a series of waterways that would connect the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac to the Ohio River and from there, well, who knew what lay beyond?

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An hour, a day, or four days spent on the towpath offers “a vignette of America becoming a continental nation, of how the genius of this nation got its critical mass and moved over the Appalachian Mountains,” Babbitt said.

But now it is the ultimate un-freeway: A shady path decorated with Dutchman’s-breeches flowers, May apples and violets alongside the slow-moving, often stagnant, water.

The towpath and canal are home to turtles, black snakes, ducks, Canada geese, a bald eagle nest--all of which were spotted as Babbitt kept up a 21-mile-a-day pace.

Below the adjacent woods lie the remnants of earlier communities: a Civil War encampment, a French trading post and, says park Supt. Douglas D. Faris, artifacts of the Tuscarora tribe that lived here as long as 2,000 years ago.

“This is a historic monument, in the same sense as the Lincoln Memorial and Ford’s Theater, a testimony to who we are as a people,” Babbitt said. “I don’t think anyone suggests we should let the Washington Monument fall into ruins, or that Independence Hall should be left to the elements.”