It's no surprise that natural and artificial waterways are part of the daily lives of Agen people. The town of Agen has from the very beginning looked to the Garonne to the West and, from the 19th century onward, to the Lateral Canal to the North as geographical boundaries and commercial arteries.

The Canal Bridge

THE LADY GARONNE: A RIVER HELD IN FEAR AND RESPECT:


The Garonne is responsible for the very existence of our town. The early Celtic settlements remind us that, at a time when roads were almost non-existent, riverbanks, and especially fords, were strategic areas for economic and military settlement. During the Gallic War, the "Garumna", named after the Garumniti, a people from the Spanish Pyrenees and mentioned by Julius Caesar, formed the boundary between two nations. In the 6th century, the poet Ausone, consul of the Emperor Gratian, the geographer Strabon and Alboufeda all testified to its economic importance as a conveyor of metal ores, hides, wool and wine between Bordeaux and Toulouse. Indeed, from the Gallo-Roman era in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D., Agen was a commercial transit port and became the second most important city in Aquitaine, thanks to the river and the roads on which it lay. 

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Barbarian hordes ravaged the region and in the 9th century the Norsemen used the river to reach Toulouse, passing Agen on the way. It was at this time that the Garonne marked the dividing line between two separate peoples, which would develop into two provinces with two distinct Occitan dialects: Languedocian to the North and Gascon to the South. 
But the river's shifting course and violent floods forced the town to limit its development to the right bank. On four or five occasions in the Middle Ages, attempts to build a bridge joining the two banks failed as the constructions were carried away by rising waters. The people of Agen, therefore, could only cross the river by ferry. The first bridge worthy of the name was the "Pont de Pierre", built in 1827, but replaced in 1972 by a construction more suitable for cars. 
The Garonne in medieval times presented an unusual sight with its "boat mills", boats moored to the quay and carrying two wheels which were turned by the current to power a grindstone and produce the flour for which the town was famous. 
By the 17th century, the town was importing via the Garonne from Bordeaux much more than it was exporting. Sugar, spices and the bounty of the oceans arrived from the Atlantic, whereas the town's port at the Gravier exported an essentially local production of tobacco, wine and flour. 

The Bargemen's Guild naturally held a privileged comercial position on the river. Up to the beginning of the 20th century, they were plying their trade using various types of flat-bottomed barges, known as "sapines", made of pine wood, "miolles" and "gabares", about 20 metres long and with a shallow draught suitable for the river at low water. The post barks, of which there were eleven in 1850, remind us that the river was a competitive form of passenger transport. Bordeaux could be reached in three days, twice as fast as by road. 
Fishing was also an important activity and several families, mostly based upstream at Boé, lived from the trade in shad, eels and lampreys. The shad spawning grounds at Passage d'Agen are witness to the continued natural abundance of the river. 
Despite the fact that navigation is impossible for three months of the year, the Garonne is nevertheless considered "one of the most beautiful and fruitful navigable inland waterways." 

The Garonne can have beneficial effects (its alluvial soils produce high-quality agricultural products), but its regular, devastating floods can also wreak havoc. 
The floods have left deep scars on the collective memory, especially those of 1875, which reached 11.75 metres, and of 1930 and 1956,both of which exceeded 10 metres
The esplanade known as the Gravier is the symbol of the battle between the people of Agen and the Garonne. It was originally an island, but after a series of improvements (drainage, tree planting,…) it became the meeting point for Agen society and an important market site. In the 19th century, the Minister of Works, Sylvain Dumon, a son of Agen, had a series of mooring quays built in 1846 between the footbridge and the Rue Cale-Abadie to receive the boats carrying goods, passengers and gravel. But in spite of these achievements and the grading of the river banks, the Gravier was still subject to regular flooding as soon as water levels rose above 6 metres. 

The riverbanks were constantly being rebuilt and the towpaths had to be repaired after each disaster. 
But from 1857, competition from the railways gradually forced traffic off the river and it is nowadays no longer navigable. 

At the beginning of the 1980s, flood protection became a political issue and a system of flood barriers on the right bank and grading on the left bank have contained the Garonne, which can now no longer flood the town centre

THE GARONNE LATERAL CANAL 

FACTS AND FIGURES Length : 211 km between Toulouse and Castets en Dorthe   Number of locks :  53 Depth : 2.20 m Width : 17 m Draught : 1.80 m Headroom : 3.50

The canal was dug from 1839 to 1856 between Toulouse and Castets en Dorthe. It joined up with the Canal du Midi to make the Canal des Deux Mers, which joins the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. When Vauban completed the work of Pierre Paul de Riquet by building the section from Sète to Toulouse in 1681, he saw that the logical extension of the Royal Languedoc Canal would be towards the Atlantic. This would allow boats from the Mediterranean to reach the Atlantic without having to make the long and perilous journey round the Iberian Peninsula. But Versailles and the excesses of Louis XIV had literally emptied the royal coffers and the project was abandoned for lack of money. 
It was only when France had recovered a political and economic stability that plans for the Garonne Lateral Canal were revived in 1828. The Industrial Revolution was beginning, so it was vital that the country develop its communications network in order to transport raw materials. Moreover, canal traffic heading for Bordeaux was obliged to leave the Canal du Midi at Toulouse to join the Garonne, which caused storage problems and loss of time when navigation was impossible. 

The government finally decided in 1839 to start construction at several points at once. Thousands of navvies armed with pick and shovel took 17 years to cut 211 kms of waterway. On the way, some remarkable engineering feats were accomplished, for example the famous canal bridge at Agen, for which the civil engineers de Baudre and Job were responsible. 


Unfortunately, the canal was finished at the same time as the Bordeaux - Sète railway line, which followed the same course, and in 1857 the station at Agen received its first rail convoys. 
Certainly, at the beginning the train was hardly competitive, but the State committed the error of granting a management concession for the Lateral Canal to the Midi Railway Board, direct competitors of the canal traffic, in 1858. They quickly raised water transport taxes and by the time the concession was cancelled in 1898, the damage was already done: between 1850 and 1893, freight had been reduced by two thirds. 



The canal boatman gradually gave up, to be followed by those on the Garonne. Today, land transport has a freight monopoly. The imposing oil and grain barges have given way to pleasure boats and holiday narrow boats. This tourist activity has increased the volume of river traffic, as visitors come to explore the exceptional natural and historical surroundings.