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It's 9:30 p.m. and I'm heading up a wooded path from my car, flashlight beam bobbing, toward Lock House 22. It's dark, and I'm alone. My heart thumps faster as I draw closer to the sturdy structure.
The lock house — small, stone and situated along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal — dates to around 1830. It was once the home of the Pennifield family, several generations of which operated the lock lift for canal boats on their way to Washington, D.C. For tonight, it will be my home. There is no heat, electricity or running water. Earlier in the day, while I still had light, I had set up my sleeping bag, blankets and a cooler stuffed with sandwiches and water bottles. I cross the canal on a footbridge, approach the door and turn the key.
"Part of the experience we're really trying to encourage people to enjoy is the dark," said Bill Justice, a spokesman for the park.
There is a 605-foot drop in elevation along the Potomac River from Cumberland to Georgetown, the stretch along which the 184-mile canal runs, according to the park's Web site. Until 1924, 74 lift locks allowed boats carrying goods to Washington, D.C., to navigate the canal. Lock keepers tended those lifts, and lived in the lock houses with their families.
Of the 26 remaining lock houses, three have been rehabilitated to reflect historic life along the canal. A fourth is in the works. Lock House 22 in Potomac – known as Pennyfield Lock, despite the fact that the Pennifield family spelled their name with an "i," according to a National Park Service historic record – is geared to evoke life during the 1830s, a time when the canal was still being constructed.
Lock tenders, Justice said, were on call 24 hours a day to respond to a horn blast or a cry of "Hey, Lock!" from an incoming canal boat.
Framed photographs, interpretive material and period-appropriate furnishings add to the experience for overnight guests. As they enter the lock house, a marker panel advises: "Step back in time and immerse yourself in history. If you listen closely, you may hear voices from the past whispering their stories."
Think of the lock house as a root cellar, Bud Cline instructed me.
Cline is a lock house "quartermaster." A longtime park volunteer, he acts as a point man for overnight guests. We meet at the house just before sunset.
The afternoon's temperatures are in the 70s, and I'm surprised at how much colder it is inside. It's the stone that holds in the cold, Cline wrote. His e-mail also warned of spiders. And just in case, he advised me to keep my food in a mouse-proof container.
"I hope I didn't scare you off," Cline laughs, still wearing his gear from patrolling the towpath on his bike.
Downstairs is a small living and dining area, where the furnishings reflect the lock keepers' simple lifestyle. Cline shows me how to lock the shutters. "Watch your head," he advises as I ascend the stairs to the sleeping area. It's furnished with four simple beds with trundles beneath, and white basins with jugs similar to what the Pennifields might have used to wash.
He warns me to expect near total darkness when I arrive back from town. Cline stayed several evenings ago, and he recalls heading outside in the middle of the night. "I remember thinking, this must be what it's like to have a boat come through at two in the morning," he says. "Pitch black."
"If walls could talk, then Lock House 22 could tell some tales," the marker panel outside the house reads. It notes an incident where a lock keeper let the water out of the lock too quickly and sank a boat carrying 113 tons of coal. The lock is also associated with President Grover Cleveland, who used the nearby Pennyfield Inn – a recently demolished home built by the Pennifields in 1879 – as a favored retreat, fishing for bass along the Potomac. Records show the family may have even operated a fishing camp.
The first lock keeper there in the 1830s was Charles Henry Washington Pennifield, said Clare Kelly, the research and designation coordinator for Montgomery County's Historic Preservation office. Given an acre to farm, he and his family would have led a largely solitary life, tied to the lock to tend to the boats coming through. Later, however, a community would crop up there, according to historic records. In the 1850s, mill owner John Lawrence Dufief maintained a warehouse near the lock to store flour that was hauled down Travilah Road from his mill, Kelly said. At Pennyfield Lock, it was shipped on canal boats to Washington, D.C.
"The whole family was really involved with the operation of the locks," Kelly said. "They started at a young age, and when they got to be old enough they would take over from their father. It really was a tradition passed from one generation to another."
It's 10 p.m. and I'm starting to feel the root cellar effect. It's a moist, nagging cold that seeps into your skin.
Tonight, voices from the past don't seem to speak up. But, sitting awake in his bedroom, I hear the same sounds Charles Henry the lock keeper might have nearly 180 years ago. The rushing water in the canal, muffled by the thick stone, are just barely audible.
I burrow under the blankets and imagine how startling a horn blast or cry from a boatman would sound out of the stillness.
Open houses have been scheduled for the rehabilitated lock houses along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal to kick off the Canal Quarters pilot program, which allows people to stay overnight in the buildings. For details, go to the C&O Canal Trust's Web site at
www.canaltrust.org.
