Potomac Company

The Potomac Company (spelled variously as Patowmack, Potowmack, Potowmac, and Compony) was created in 1785 to make improvements to the Potomac River and improve its navigability for commerce. The Potomac Company built five skirting canals around the major falls. When completed it allowed boats and rafts to float downstream towards Georgetown, a major port of the time on the Potomac River, now in the District of Columbia. George Washington was its first president, as well as an investor in the company. Tobias Lear, Washington's personal secretary, was its chairman for a period. Other principals of the company included Thomas Johnson of Maryland.

The Potomac Company had the goal of linking the East Coast with the Old Northwest. The endeavor eventually failed due to a combination of factors such as an unstable American economy, unreliable government aid, and conflicts between states. Although the charter was surrendered to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company in 1828, it is significant because it serves as an example of how a deficient amount of support from the federal government can undermine a large, desirable infrastructure project. The U.S. government was more conscious of the effects of its involvement in developing infrastructure in the fledgling republic.

While slim boats called bateaux could be poled up-river in even the shallowest of waters, they could not traverse the fall line, the area where an upland region (continental bedrock) and a coastal plain (coastal alluvia) meet, typically in waterfalls.

One of the major constructions of the Potomac Company was the Patowmack Canal. A major engineering feat of the time, the Potomack Canal permitted boats to navigate around Great Falls, where the Potomac River drops a treacherous 75 feet through the unnavigable Mather Gorge.

After 21 years, the Potomack Canal was sold, along with the other assets of the Potomac Company to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company, which built a canal on the opposite, Maryland side of the Potomac River.