This image showing the course of the Muscle Shoals Canal is significant because it shows the significant barriers to navigation that the Muscle Shoals presented in the days before the TVA dams were built. The Muscle Shoals is generally accepted as the western 'boundary' of the Nickajack. Over a distance of around 37 miles between Florence and Brown's Ferry in Limestone County, the river fell 137 feet, creating rapids, waterfalls, sandbars, whirlpools, sinks and sucks that were extremely hazardous to navigation. The first Muscle Shoals Canal was completed in 1836 and was 14.5 miles long, 60 feet deep and 6 feet deep with a total of 17 locks with five foot lifts. This first canal was abandoned in 1938 due to lack of funding. An alternative was found - the Tuscumbia, Courtland and Decatur Railroad was chartered in 1832. Steamboats would unload their cargo at Tuscumbia for the overland trip to Decatur where cargo was loaded again on steamboats to continue their journey through the Nickajack to the Upper Tennessee. Surveying for a new canal system was begun in 1871 during Reconstruction, and construction began in 1875. The Shoals were finally submerged and opened to navigation with the construction of the Wilson Dam in 1918.
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