The Raystown Branch feeder, the lock that kept the canal watered east of Huntingdon

East of Huntingdon, on the northeast bank of the Juniata just below where the Raystown Branch comes in, two parallel stone walls run for 90 feet, eight feet high and 15 feet apart. They are the guard lock of the Raystown Branch feeder on the Juniata Division of the Pennsylvania Canal, which the nomination dates to 1831. Vertical slots cut at two to three foot intervals along their whole length show where timbers were set to carry the horizontal planking that lined the lock's walls and floor.

On November 19, 1828, contracts were let for the canal between Lewistown and Huntingdon. Uriah Wickwire was named to build the Raystown Branch feeder and Dearmond, Rodearmel and Company the dam; Africa's 1883 county history prints the same awards under the same date. The dam ran from the outer lock wall across the river by way of a midstream island. Its job, with the feeder, was to hold the canal at its proper level from here east to Newton Hamilton, where the next feeder dam stood. The nomination explains a guard lock's two uses: open, it let river water in to replace what leaked and evaporated; closed in high water, it kept floods out of the canal.

Boats built on Standing Stone Creek also came into the canal through it. The nomination says: "A boat built on Standing Stone Creek for Hill and Mayland of Huntingdon entered the newly completed canal by this route on May 18, 1831, and was towed up to the town." Africa's history tells the same story and adds that the day was a Wednesday.

The feeder was abandoned when the canal closed in the 1870s. Beyond the lock walls remain stone and earth remnants of the dam from the lock wall out to the island, and an earthen channel, nine tenths of a mile by the nomination's measure, ending in tumbled stonework where the feeder joined the canal proper.

The nomination form, prepared in September 1989, lists the site under Springfield Township. Its text was taken from Nancy Shedd's 1988 county survey for the Historic American Engineering Record, and that survey as published in 1991 places the site in Henderson Township. Joe Clark of Mount Union, who had walked and photographed the whole Juniata Division and was interviewed for the survey in November 1988, called it the best preserved canal remain in Huntingdon County.

A boat built on Standing Stone Creek for Hill and Mayland of Huntingdon entered the newly completed canal by this route on May 18, 1831, and was towed up to the town.National Register of Historic Places nomination, Pennsylvania Canal Guard Lock and Feeder Dam, Raystown Branch (reference 90000394), Pennsylvania Canal Guard Lock and Feeder Dam, Raystown Branch, section 8, p6 · character 8,029 of the scanned text

Checked 2026-09-05 · National Register of Historic Places nomination, read in full

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