The Susquehanna River (; Lenape: Siskëwahane) is a river located in the northeastern United States. At long, it is the longest river on the American east coast that drains into the Atlantic Ocean. With its watershed, it is the 16th-largest river in the United States, and the longest river in the continental United States without commercial boat traffic today. In the Canal Era, navigation improvements were made to enhance the river for barge shipping of bulk goods by water transport on the Pennsylvania Canal; competition from faster transport via the railroad industry resulted in reducing the maintenance on the river. The Susquehanna rises and flows through New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland into the Chesapeake Bay. It forms from two main branches: the "North Branch", which rises in upstate New York and is regarded by federal mapmakers as the main branch, and the West Branch Susquehanna. Both of these waterways were improved by navigations throughout the 1820s and 1830s as the Pennsylvania Canal. Together with facilities of the Allegheny Portage Railroad, loaded barges were transferred from the canal and hoisted across the mountain ridge into the Pittsburgh area. The 82-mile leg conceived to connect the Delaware River to the Susquehanna was instead developed as the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad, built by the Pennsylvania Canal Commission. The shorter West Branch, which rises in western Pennsylvania, joins the main stem of the Susquehanna near Northumberland in central Pennsylvania.