In order to alleviate the obstruction to river traffic at Louisville, the General Assembly approved "an act to incorporate the Louisville and Portland Canal Company" on January 12, 1825. Sixteen prominent Kentuckians, including Robert Breckinridge, Samuel Churchill, and James Guthrie, formed the corporation "for the purpose of opening and constructing a canal navigation with suitable locks, docks, and basins around the falls of the River Ohio within the State of Kentucky." The capital stock of the company would consist of 600,000 dollars, divided into shares of one hundred dollars each. The company would have to begin work on the canal within eighteen months and complete it within three years of the passage of the act or the corporate powers would terminate.
"A Plan of the Rapids of the Ohio" from Imlay's A Topographical Description of the Western Territory . . ., published by J. Debrett, London, 1793. A comment at left on the map notes, "From A to B a canal is intended to be cut." Martin F. Schmidt Collection, Kentucky Historical Society Collections.
