The great popular enthusiasm of a few years before for the canal had now changed to contempt with the coming of that new toy, the railroad. There had been numerous complaints that malaria was being caused by the canal supply reservoirs, especially the Birch Creek Reservoir; and the growing scorn for the old ditch, fostered by journalistic sneers, soon led to outrages.

One of the aqueducts was fired by a mob in 1855, and men with blackened faces cut the Birch Creek dam, draining the reservoir and leaving a long section of the canal dry. The dam was repaired, and cut again the following year.

The tolls in 1857 were only $60,000; $40,000 was spent in repairs below Terre Haute alone. Floods broke the banks and destroyed aqueducts in several places. The trustees ordered any portion of the canal not paying expenses to be closed; and that portion below Terre Haute was closed immediately. The canal was offered on lease to anyone who would keep it in repair for use. Some half-hearted attempts were made below Terre Haute, but no repairs were made, and that section closed forever in 1860.

The upper half continued to operate fitfully for a few years, but the Wabash Railroad, by cutting rates, soon drove it out of existence. The last boat which ran through from Lodi, near Terre Haute, to Toledo, was the Rocky Mountain, which cleared October 26, 1872. The Trustees finally surrendered their trust in 1874. That year, the last boat on the canal east of Lafayette was crossing the Deer Creek aqueduct when the decrepit structure gave way, and the mules and black driver were swept down the roaring water into the creek below and drowned.

As late as 1875, a boat managed to get through from Lodi to Lafayette, but by that time the greater part of the old waterway was naught but a muddy, noisome ditch.
Old Towpaths. Alvin F, Harlow 1926 D. Appleton Co.

Almost every one of our Indiana exchanges that we take up has something to say about the "Canal question," as it is called. A sudden and startling excitement, it seems, is sprung upon us - Canal meetings have been, and are being, held all along the Canal from Evansville to Fort Wayne, which have tended to increase this methodical excitement. We call it methodical, because we believe the whole affair has been arranged by the Bondholders, so as to raise the wind in time to operate upon the present session of our Legislature. A meeting was called at this place, as we suppose, at the instance of one or more of the Canal officers; but the thing died in its inception.

Not because our citizens are opposed to the prosperity of the Canal, or desire its abandonment. On the contrary, the general and in fact universal expression of sentiment is in favor of having the Canal sustained. But there is an equally universal distrust of the good faith of the Bondholders in the present question. And until they can be satisfied of the honesty and good faith in their professions, the verdict will be - "Hands off." This, too, seems to be the sentiment at other points beside our own, and so far no tangible proposition has been made by either party to the original contract, or even suggested by the people.
Indiana Herald. Wed. Jan. 19, 1859. p2 col 1

The State Canal Convention, which assembled at Indianapolis on the first of this month, was addressed by numerous friends of the Canal. Among those delivering speeches, we notice the names of Judge Hanna, of Fort Wayne, Stearns Fisher, of Wabash, and Senator Slack, of this place. All persons present agreed as to the importance of preserving the Canal. A committee was appointed to draw up a memorial to the Legislature, which committee on the next day reported a lengthy memorial, setting forth the advantages of the Canal, and the evils that must necessarily result from its abandonment. The report was adopted unanimously, and the Committee authorized to present it before the Legislature at an early day.

A resolution was also adopted calling on the people of the Counties bordering on and contiguous to the Canal to hold public meetings to discuss the subject, and use such means as may influence their Senators and Representatives to action.
Indiana Herald. Feb 9, 1859. p2 col 1

We find in the Indianapolis papers a letter from Thomas Dowling, of Terre Haute, one of the Trustees of the Canal, in answer to some of the questions and charges of those opposed to Legislative interference, in which he states that the Canal paid well from 1846 to 1854. That about that time the State allowed a company to build and put in operation a Railroad along the line of the Canal, in violation of the spirit of the contract with the Bondholders. That the Trustees lost by this at the Lafayette and Fort Wayne offices $220,000 in two years, and in like proportion along the whole line, in consequence of which, he says, the Trustees are authorized to abandon the whole, or any part of the Canal, and that nothing but the interposition of the State authorities can prevent the Canal from going into disuse.

This appears to be intended for a kind of explanation of the former report of the Trustees, but is one of the kind of explanations usually denominated "clear as mud." They still continue to threaten, and hold out signs of destruction, and the only favorable symptom we can discover is the intimation to the Legislature that if their (the Trustees) advice is asked they may give them something more "explicit and emphatic." Now so far as the emphatic is concerned, this communication of Mr. Dowling certainly does not lack that element, but there is nothing explicit in it.

To the charge of extravagance preferred against the officers at the Canal, Mr. Dowling replies rather more explicitly and emphatically, denying the charge in toto, and further that "What the hired scullions of a bankrupt and dishonest Railroad, which has swindled hundreds of the people of Indiana out of their stock and sunk it in the capacious maw of "First Mortgage Bondholders" may say, does not concern him." This is quite bitter, and what is more to the point, it is joking on facts, the truth of which can be attested by many of our citizens, and facts of a like disagreeable character might be added to them ad infinitum; and to which we may hereafter have occasion to refer.

Our own notion of this communication, as well as the former report of the Trustees, is that they look too much like bait thrown out for the Legislature to swallow. They do not state their intentions, their wants, or their objects in regards to any matter connected with the Canal. They evidently wish the Legislature to make the first proposition, for some cause or other, that we confess ourselves unable to divine. They are non-commitalists in every sense of the word, and why ? Echo answers - why?
Indiana Herald. Wed. Feb. 23, 1859. p2, col4

Our readers have already been advised of the various steps taken to secure some necessary Legislation, looking to the keeping open the Canal - and the unceremonious treatment, not to say contempt, that all such effects have met with in the Legislature. The following synopsis of a bill introduced in the Senate of the 15th inst. by Mr. Conner of Wabash, comes nearer meeting the case and obviating reasonable objection, than any thus that has met our eye. We copy from the Indiana Journal of the 16th inst., with the comments of the Editor thereon:

Mr. Conner, from the Committee on Canals and Internal Improvements, has reported a bill providing for the releasing of the right of the State of Indiana to redeem the Wabash and Erie Canal; and granting such permission to the Trustees of said Canal to rent or lease the same.

Section first simply release the right of the State to redeem the Canal, leaving the acts of 1846 and 1847, and the trust created thereby, in full force and in no wise impaired or changed.

Section two grants permission to the Canal Trustees to rent or lease the Canal or any part thereof, to any person or corporation upon first obtaining the consent of the Stockholders in said Canal.

Section three provides that the lessees shall keep the canal in good navigable order, under penalty of forfeiting all right under such lease, saving the rights of lessees who may be engaged in making repairs in good faith.

Section four confers the poser of collecting tolls, preserving the canal, &c., on the lessee.

Section five releases the canal trustees from building bridges.

Section six expressly declares that nothing in the Act shall be so construed as to create, revive or recognize the existence of any liability on the part of the State for that portion of the public debt which was settled by the Acts of 1846 and 1847, and charged over to the canal.

Section seven contains an emergency clause.

This bill, we think, embodies about the idea we have urged as the basis of our canal policy, that is, neither to maintain the canal out of the Treasury, nor yet ignore its existence entirely, as some propose, but to authorize the Trustees, so far as any authority from the State is needed, to make such disposition of it by lease as they may choose. If they want to retain under their own control so much of the canal as the revenue will maintain, they can do so.

This Act does not prevent it, so far as we can see. If they wish to lease, in whole or in sections, to companies or individuals, they may do so, and if the future course of the trade should so turn as to again deposit a paying revenue in the canal, the Trustees, on the expiration of the leases, may resume it, and get their interest and debt out of it if they want to. This, it seems to us, is the most simple, sensible and direct policy that can be adopted, and it has the additional recommendations of satisfying both the canal users, the canal owners, and those who are neither and don't want anything to do with the canal. It costs nothing, and is certainly better to allow the Trustees to lease without abandoning, than to compel them to nearly abandon it, and then let companies or counties take up such sections as they can, and keep them up.

This bill may not secure all necessary results, or provide against all difficulties, but so far as we can see, it is adequate to the purpose, and if it is not, it can easily be made so.
Indiana Herald. Wed. Feb. 23, 1859. p2, col4

Capt. Watkins, who is one of the very earliest residents of Wabash county, having come to Lagro on June 15, 1831, and made his home there continuously ever since, was in this city yesterday and filed his clam to the distinction of having been the last man to navigate the old Wabash & Erie canal, now but a grass-grown trench and a faded memory.

Capt. Watkins bears lightly his eighty-seven years having been born in Wales in 1819, and coming to this country when only 12 years old. Soon after landing, he went straight to Lagro, and obtained a place as a grog carrier for the laborers digging the big ditch, most of them Irish, receiving for the service seventy-five cents a day in the “blue pup” and “white dog” currency of those days. When the canal was completed he took a situation on a boat, and finally was advanced to the post of captain, a place he proudly held until the last trip was made by any craft.

It was long after the formal abandonment of the canal for through business that Capt. Watkins made his last voyage. Along in 1875 Henry Stevens of Lagro was buying grain. Another buyer had leased the Wabash railroad elevator at that point, and the railway company sought to protect the elevator men in their monopoly of the grain trade at Lagro by a discriminating charge of several cents a bushel for loading cars through the elevator. This charge was imposed on grain loaded direct from wagons, and as Stevens, who was probably the most prominent citizen of the place and a fighter, had nothing but the little elevator on the canal he was virtually put out of business, the railroad people refusing to set cars for him unless he paid the charges. As Stevens had contracted for the delivery of considerable wheat which was coming in rapidly, and had no place to store it, he was very much distressed. The boats on the old canal had long since ceased running and Capt. Watkins had gone to other employment in Lagro. His boat had sunk in the basin a mile west of the town where it was slowly rotting, and there was little prospect, indeed, either of the veteran commander or his craft, sailing the decaying highway of commerce, which wound, a turgid yellow stream among the hills and along the beautiful valley of the Wabash.

The situation was serious enough for Stevens, and in casting about for a means of getting his grain to market, he bethought himself of the fact that the old Cincinnati, Wabash & Michigan railroad, the Michigan division of the Big Four, had been constructed into Wabash, and that its freight tracks were built along the very brink of the canal in that city. Loading from a canal boat would be easy and cheap, but where was the canal boat?
It was while he revolved this problem in his mind that he encountered Capt. Watkins, and the idea dawned that the captain’s old stake boat lay in the basin, and might yet be strong enough to haul a few loads of wheat to Wabash, the distance being only five miles. The proposition was promptly made to Watkins to raise the sunken boat and get back into service again, and the suggestion stirred the blood in the veins of the old sea dog, who reflected that even if he raised the old boat and caulked her spreading coons, that she would probably be unseaworthy and might again seek the muddy depths of the channel with a full cargo. “I will give you steady employment for two month,” said Stevens, “at $5
a day for yourself and two men, handling two cars of wheat a day, and will furnish you a mule and two line. Rather than have the deal fall through, I will pay for your dinners at Arch Stitt's’s or Bill Ditton’s”

Capt. Watkins decided it was worth a trail, and the next day went down to the wreck of the boat, and as the water in the basin was shallow, soon had the hulk afloat, and within two days she was receiving her cargo at the old dock in Lagro. Two cars of wheat were placed aboard, the mule was hitched to the line, and, while the canal was shallow having filled during the long period of neglect, Capt. Watkins’ craft did not once ground. One day he left Lagro in the morning, arrived at Wabash about ten o’clock with the load of sacked wheat, transferred the latter to the cars set conveniently by the old C.W. & M. road, and returned to Lagro by three o’clock, ready to load for the next trip. Through the summer the trips were kept up, and as Stevens’ wheat went north and came into Toledo over the Lake Shore road, it graded as Michigan wheat and he got from two to four cents a bushel premium over the Indiana grades. When the season ended Capt. Watkins ran his boat back to the basin and anchored her, and thus ended for all time navigation on the Wabash & Erie canal.
Wabash Plain Dealer, April 14, 1905

Mr. Alschwede recalled the last boat on the canal. It was owned by Max Baumgartner who started a trip west. The canal was low at the time and Baumgartner and the boat stalled just east of the old red bridge that spanned the river on the Range Line Road. There the old boat laid and rotted, Alschwede said. Numerous fishermen helped the boat disappear by using the wood for fires.
Huntington Herald Press August 22, 1948 (VM Collection)

The old dredge boat which has been lying on the canal bed a mile east of Lagro has been sold to Thomas Scott of Ohio, who is taking out and moving the machinery to Toledo. That destroys the last hope of the canal ever being repaired and placed in a navigable condition.
Wabash Plain Dealer. January 14, 1876

When railroad fever first hit the Hoosier state, waterways were the accepted mode of transporting bulky materials over long distances. The initial purpose of the railroad was to supplement the waterway system. Since the state's population was weighted towards the Ohio River, towns along its banks had a strong priority as terminals. Almost this many more were to touch the Wabash & Erie Canal, while others were to tie in the northern portion of the state with the natural waterway supplied by the Great Lakes.
The Hoosier State- Readings in Indiana History. Ralph Gray. 1980

In 1881 the canal right of way was bought by the New York and Pennsylvania Railroad. The last canal boat afloat within Fort Wayne' settled in sticky mud, as the water was drained from the canal in 1882 to permit the filling of the channel to provide a rail bed for the ties and rails. The railroad paid $137,000 for the property.
Fort Wayne on the old Canal. FW & AC Public library, 1952

The street and alley committee went to Lagro to inspect the dam and to make repairs necessary to fill the old ditch with water and destroy the frightful stench that has emanated therefrom for the last month, or two.
Wabash Plain Dealer. September 7, 1888

An oak timber, thought to have been used more than a century ago in the construction of the Wabash and Erie canal through this city, was found Friday morning by workmen excavating for a sewer manhole at the northwest corner of East Park Drive and Guilford street. The excavation is part of the work of widening the street as a route for US 224 and SR. 9 through the city.

The timber was hewed to about a foot square, and was declared in a fine state of preservation. The workmen cut though the timber which lay across the hole they were digging, leaving part of it on each side of the excavation. Some of the chips from the timber were brought to the Herald Press to prove the story. The wood was soaked with moisture, but showed little signs of rotting.
Huntington Herald Press Aug. 3, 1934