Back in 1785, at George Washington's encouragement, the James River Company began the James River and Kanawha Canal, a bold Virginia project later restarted under the James River and Kanawha Canal Company. Imagine the ambition: a water highway to carry passengers and freight from the western counties to the coast. It was expensive, repeatedly failed financially, and was frequently damaged by floods.
The Commonwealth of Virginia, largely through the Virginia Board of Public Works, financed much of the work, yet by 1851 the canal was only half completed, reaching Buchanan in Botetourt County. When work to extend it further west stopped, railroads were already overtaking the canal as a far more productive mode of transportation. After the Civil War, funds were unavailable from the war-torn Commonwealth or private sources, and the project finally succumbed to massive flooding in 1877.
Its towpath later became the roadbed for a rail line that followed the same course; its right-of-way was bought and the canal was largely dismantled. Picture the passengers and freight moving by water, the wash of floodwater, and the ground where the old towpath became a rail roadbed before you.