Lock 23 is located at Mile 22 on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath. There is a parking lot at the site. See the Locks and Lockhouses web page for an interactive location map.
Lock 23 on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal is known as Violette’s lock, named for the last lockkeeper before the C&O Canal closed, Alfred Violette. There are three structures here: the actual lift lock (technical name for a lock), Inlet Lock 2 (or guard lock), and Dam 2, of which nothing remains.
A lift lock is what raises and lowers a boat between two segments of a canal that are at different elevations. Think of a staircase in your house. To get from the top to the bottom there are a number of steps. When one step butts into another, you must move your foot up or down to get to the next level. That’s what a lock does. It’s really nothing more than an elevator for boats that uses water as its lifting method. By connecting together many level sections of a canal that are at different elevations using lift locks to maneuver the boats between them, you can build a long canal over uneven terrain. The elevation change from Georgetown to Cumberland is 605 feet.
The gates on Lock 23 still exist, though I doubt they work. From here on down to Georgetown most locks have gates. However, as you proceed upstream, gates are not all that common.
An inlet lock is a man-made channel that connects the canal’s source of water—in this case the Potomac River—to the canal. The gate can be opened or closed to regulate the flow of water. A long canal such as the C&O (184 miles) needs established water sources every so many miles. The water that enters through Inlet Lock 2 provides the water all the way to Lock 5 seventeen miles downstream. Inlet Lock 2 also served as an entrance to the canal for boats coming across the Potomac from Virginia. If the canal and river are at the same elevation, the boat simply floats through the open gate. However, when the river and canal are at different elevations, inlet locks functioned as lift locks for raising and lowering the boats to the appropriate level. I am not sure if this was the case with Inlet Lock 2.
To keep the water of the Potomac River from flooding into the canal, the National Park Service usually plugs inlet locks with stone or concrete. However, this was not done at Inlet Lock 2, so the gate still works. So why was this lock not plugged? Well, from here on down to Georgetown the canal is kept watered so canoeists and kayakers can paddle on the canal, plus the National Park Service offers canal boat rides at Great Falls Tavern (Lock 20).
Dams are built at various locations on the river so water can be pooled and available during times of low rainfall. In this case, one end of Dam 2 was angled to force water into Inlet Lock 2. Today nothing remains of the dam. In fact, all it was to begin with was a pile of rocks and rubble, not a concrete structure like Dam 4, which still exists. By the mid-1800s, Dam 2 had been damaged to the extent that it could no longer be guaranteed to hold back enough water if a drought came, and by 1873 it ceased to exist. However, enough river debris had piled up to keep water flowing into the inlet lock.
It’s hard to picture this network of water control devices simply by standing at Violette’s Lock, but if you take a look at the satellite image below from Google, you can clearly see the layout.
I got the following photo by making my way down to the Lock 23 canoe launch in front of the two locks. You can see where they come together in a V-shape.
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Last updated on June 11, 2024