In the town of Lockbourne, Ohio (just south of Columbus) you'll find several relics appropriate to the town's name: locks, from the canal which brought the town into existence.
A lock is a chamber in a canal which is used to raise or lower boats to different water levels. A boat enters the lock, it's closed at the rear, and the water level is either raised or lowered. Then the front opens and the boats keeps going. Pretty simple. Locks are necessary to prevent dangerous currents and waterfalls, both of which were devastating to the flat-bottomed canal boats of the nineteenth century.
Lockbourne is a genuine canal town. Laid out in the early 1800's by Colonel James Kilbourne, it came into existence because of the Ohio & Erie Canal, which was constructed between 1825 and 1847 and ran between Cleveland and Portsmouth. The vast majority of early Lockbourne residents worked on the canal.
Above are the remains of lock 29, which lies on Canal Street off Lockbourne Road. The bottom of this one is a flooded mess. You can see where a tree grew up through some of the stones on the far side.
These are locks 26 and 27, on Canal Road east of the railroad tracks. Once, while doing donuts in his truck, Hoss and I almost plunged into number 27. 26 has a creek running through it, but 27 is dry.
This picture was e-mailed to me. It shows a wooden door which was uncovered at the bottom of one of the locks, presumably from a canal boat or a canal-related structure. This is the kind of stuff that ends up in museums.
Lockbourne has other interesting relics, including the Plague Cemetery. It's located about five miles south of I-270, west of Route 23.
