The Cape Cod Canal is an artificial waterway in Massachusetts connecting Cape Cod Bay in the north to Buzzards Bay in the south, and is part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. The approximately 17.4-mile long canal traverses the neck of land joining Cape Cod to the state's mainland. It mostly follows tidal rivers widened to 480 feet and deepened to 32 feet at mean low water, shaving up to 135 miles off the journey around the Cape for its approximately 14,000 annual users.
Most of the canal is located in the town of Bourne, but its northeastern terminus is in Sandwich. Scusset Beach State Reservation lies near the canal's north entrance, and the Massachusetts Maritime Academy is near its south. A swift-running current changes direction every six hours and can reach 5.2 miles per hour during the receding ebb tide.
The waterway is maintained by the United States Army Corps of Engineers and has no toll fees. It is spanned by the Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge, the Bourne Bridge, and the Sagamore Bridge. Traffic lights at either end govern the approach of vessels over 65 feet.
The canal is occasionally used by whales and dolphins, including endangered North Atlantic right whales, which can cause closure of the canal.
On June 22, 1909, construction finally began for a working canal under the direction of August Belmont Jr.'s Boston, Cape Cod & New York Canal Company, using designs by engineer William Barclay Parsons. The canal engineers encountered many problems, such as huge boulders underwater. Divers were hired to blow them up, but the effort slowed dredging. Another problem was cold winter storms which forced the engineers to stop dredging altogether and wait for spring. Nevertheless, the canal opened on a limited basis on July 29, 1914, and it was completed in 1916. The privately owned toll canal had a maximum width of 100 feet and a maximum depth of 25 feet, and it took a somewhat difficult route from Phinney Harbor at the head of Buzzards Bay. Several accidents occurred due to the narrow channel and navigation difficulty, and these limited traffic and tarnished the canal's reputation. Toll revenues failed to meet investors' expectations as a result, despite shortening the trade route from New York City to Boston by 62 miles.
On July 25, 1918, the Director General of the United States Railroad Administration took over jurisdiction and operation of the canal under a presidential proclamation. Four days earlier, the German U-boat U-156 surfaced three miles off Orleans, Massachusetts on July 21, 1918, and shelled the tugboat Perth Amboy and her string of four barges. The canal remained under government control until 1920, during which the United States Army Corps of Engineers re-dredged the channel to 25 feet deep.
In 1928, the government purchased the canal for $11.4 million as a free public waterway, and $21 million was spent between 1935 and 1940 increasing the canal's width to 480 feet and its depth to 32 feet. As a result, it became the widest sea-level canal of its time. The southern entrance to the canal was rebuilt for direct access from Buzzards Bay rather than through Phinney Harbor. Before construction began, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology built a huge scale model of the canal (9 feet to a mile, roughly 1⁄587 actual size) to study the hydraulic effects of tidal currents on the enlarged and rerouted canal.
: Bill Larson, but did not win the pot.
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