Montlucon owes its industrial expansion with the opening of the Berry canal. Open to navigation in 1823, it provided connections Montlucon in Saint-Aignan and the Loire. It will create a port, the implementation of large-eating plants iron and coal, the birth of a new city (the City Gozet) and the extension of the Old City outside its ancient walls. For nearly a century, the Canal de Berry will play a leading role for montluçonnaise city.
It is by an Imperial decree of Napoleon dated 16 November 1807 ordering the construction of a canal on the left bank of the Cher industrial development of the Bourbon city will experience tremendous growth.
Montlucon to link to the Loire, is the Dutens engineer who is responsible for its implementation starting in 1808 by the digging of the port of Montlucon. The work will continue until 1815 in the Allier. They will lead to the building of ten eight locks and bridges, the remedying of Cher meanders without speaking, of course, the digging of the canal which will require the use of a thousand Spanish prisoners in hard labor to poor sanitary conditions. In 1815, they are released and replaced by political or military prisoners who are swelling the number of laborers already recruited locally.
1823, sailing barges, flat-bottomed boats, circulating on the channel to route to Montlucon Urcay, Commentry coal for the forges of Tronçais.
He was actually completed in 1834, under the July Monarchy, just when the first railways was opened.
Cher called the canal in the early nineteenth century it was first designed as a side channel Cher, Montlucon in Vallon. Renamed Berry canal during the reign of Louis XVIII, it was realized as connecting channel between the Cher and the Loire. Giving it the channel name Montseigneur of the Duc de Berry, Restoration and wanted to honor the memory of assassinated Crown Prince in 1820, yet it never participated in its realization.
But Berry channel name will remain and will be found preserved in the archives, still employed by the administration of the Highways and sailors who saw written on the walls of the lock houses. But in Montlucon, he was popularly called Berry canal probably because the logic of the population, it allowed to connect the city to the Berry.
This channel is the result of a long policy development and planning of waterways, which began in the seventeenth century under the old monarchy. The railway did not yet exist. Metalled roads, often poorly maintained and vehicles loads pulled by horses could respond effectively and economically, the transport of goods of all kinds. The role of the channel will therefore vital for local development until the late nineteenth century.
Therefore, the channel experienced a decline in activity. Originally planned to import iron ore from Berry and export coal from Commentry, its traffic declined due to the depletion of coal reserves and a Berrichon ore abandoned in favor of Lorraine ore. Playing its full role in local and regional trade, it quickly became obsolete when the need imposed exchange with industrial and mining areas of eastern and northern France.
This channel had a disability who is accused over time: small size made for reasons of cost price, its locks and its works that did not allow the passage of small tonnage boats. The Berrichonnes Montlucon or hardly allowed as fillers from 60 to 70 tonnes. They could certainly access all channels wider and deeper but boatloads of 200-300 tons, which came from the east and north of the hexagon could transit the canal. Loads transported in bulk must be transferred into the hand which entailed a much higher cost of transport. The Berry canal was no longer profitable. Wearing Montlucon was certainly export capacity in the distance but could not import at competitive prices, except for products or goods in the region.
Although its enlargement we dressed to fit navigation for transporting boats on stronger tonnages but this project quickly ran into the question of the profitability of the work did not appear evident.
A major flood Cher in 1940 and damaged the traffic stopped during the Second World War. Repaired after the Liberation, he experienced a resurgence of activity with the transportation of building materials. Some oil-propelled barges of fuel-laden same tonnage landed in Montlucon but this last attempt to recycle the channel is not sufficient to justify its waterway maintains and permanently cease all activity.
Closed in 1955, filled to the level of the first lock in Montlucon, its location is now occupied by a council flat together, office, supermarket, commercial area, car parks and a major artery for traffic.
It remains downstream of Montlucon but its locks, mostly destroyed, will allow it to receive more boats. It is nevertheless maintained by riverside towns as it is today, a place much appreciated amenity for walkers, mountain bikers and fishermen.
