New Life To Old History

It was the engineering marvel of the early American republic: A 185-mile canal dug parallel to the Potomac River. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal reliably carried coal from the Appalachians to Washington, D.C., always avoiding the Potomac's deepest floods and steepest falls.

"The idea was to really link east — the nation's capital, Washington D.C., — with what was then the west, along the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys," said Rod Sauter of the National Park Service.

At the heart of the canal were the locks that lifted and lowered boats, some of which are still used today as tourist attractions. To staff these locks required workers called lock tenders who, by necessity, required homes built within earshot.

It was their job to maintain and operate the lift locks, and they had to be on-call 24 hours a day, day or night.

As CBS News Correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports, the C&O Canal has long been replaced by the railroad, but these lock-tender homes still exist. Most of them were padlocked and rotting until the National Park Service thought why not rent them — and better than that — why not offer reduced rent to tenants who will fix them up.

"Look at it. It's beautiful! It is a stone house built in 1830 and (when) we walked in and we just felt the history" of it, said Melissa Severy, who rented a house.

Melissa Severy and her fiancée jumped on the offer to rent, and have spent the last six months planning for a wedding and restoring their lock house.

"We're still working on the kitchen," she said. "The cabinets are original cabinets. We have stripped them and we are going to sand them and refinish them."

The park now has leased six homes.

"I'm very encouraged with what's happened so far. We look forward to leasing over the next two years maybe another 20 to 25 structures along the canal," said Doug Faris, the superintendent of C&O Canal National Historic Park.

The new tenants seem to like their home.

"I think about all the canal boats that used to go by here and all the life that this canal has seen," said Severy.

For the park service, the arrangement helps restore the legacy of America's first man-made waterway. The renters get riverfront property, minutes from downtown, and unlike before, without the risk of being summoned to open the lock at 3 a.m.

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