The 60-Foot Stone Dam Built by Hand Where No Town Existed — Jones Falls (1831)

Jones Falls, Rideau Canal: the 60-foot stone dam built by hand where no town existed, North America's tallest dam in 1831, deep in the Ontario woods. In the 1820s there was no village at Long Falls — no roads, no houses, only rapids dropping about eighteen metres through the forest. To carry the Rideau Canal past them, Colonel John By's engineers and contractor John Redpath brought in labourers to raise a curved stone arch dam about 18 metres (60 feet) high and 107 metres (350 feet) long. The stone was cut, moved and laid largely by hand, far from any town, in construction camps where disease was a constant danger. When it was finished in 1831, it was the tallest dam in North America. But the dam was only the beginning. Around it grew a lockstation in the wilderness: four locks, a defensible lockmaster's house, a guardhouse, and a blacksmith forge that kept the canal's iron working for almost ninety years. In this Lockside Canada documentary, we follow Jones Falls from the empty rapids of Long Falls, through the building of the great dam and the working life of the lockstation, to the first summer hotels on the Rideau and the heritage site it is today. Historical scenes in this video are AI-generated reconstructions for illustration and are not archival photographs. Historical information is based on Parks Canada records and published local histories. Lockside Canada explores the forgotten history of Canada's canal towns, lockstations and waterways from 1820 to 1980. Subscribe for new episodes. #CanadianHistory #RideauCanal #HistoryDocumentary