Middlesex Canal's Shawsheen Aqueduct, Massachusetts

The collapsed Shawsheen Aqueduct is a remnant of the canal era of the early 19th century, when a network of artificial waterways connected many of the river systems of the northeast. The Shawsheen Aqueduct was a bridge for carrying water, three-feet deep, that was part of the 27-mile long Middlesex Canal connecting Charlestown to Lowell, conveying lumber and raw materials to Boston from the Merrimack River and the hinterlands of New Hampshire. It was one of the first major canal projects in the United States, and inspired the creation of many more, larger, canals in the country, including the Erie. The spreading of railways bankrupted this and most other inland canals in the mid-1800's, and their ruins remain as cracks in the land from a different time.