Ruins of the Broad Run Trunk at Mile 31.9 on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath

Broad Run Trunk is located at Mile 31.9 on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath. It cannot be accessed by vehicle, so reaching it requires hiking or biking 1 mile (one way) upstream from the closest parking area, Lock and Lockhouse 25. See the Locks and Lockhouses web page for an interactive location map.

If you have seen some of the intact aqueducts on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal such as the ones at Antietam Creek and Catoctin Creek, the structure spanning the Broad Run (small creek) will be of interest. It was a bridge that had a wooden bottom and two wooden parapets (retaining walls) that held water and spanned the creek. This small wooden box is called a trunk, but it has the exact traits of an aqueduct. Because of this, some architects consider the Broad Run Trunk to be an aqueduct, not simply a really short section of canal over a creek. However, most all sources today cite the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal as having eleven aqueducts, not twelve as would be the case if the Broad Run structure were counted.

Second, both the floor and parapets of the Broad Run Trunk no longer exist because they were made of wood, not stone as with all the true aqueducts. Missing stone parapets are not unusual for aqueducts on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, but all still have their bottoms, and visitors today can walk across where water once flowed. To get across Broad Run, hikers and bikers must take a modern footbridge.