The district lying to the west of Darlington, in the county of Durham, is one of the richest mineral fields of the North. Vast stores of coal underlie the Bishop Auckland Valley, and from an early period it was felt to be an exceedingly desirable object to open up new communications to enable the article to be sent to market. But the district lay a long way from the sea, and, the Tees being unnavigable, there was next to no vend for the Bishop Auckland coal. It is easy to understand, therefore, how the desire to obtain an outlet for this coal for land sale, as well as for its transport to London by sea, should have early occupied the attention of the coal-owners in the Bishop Auckland district. The first idea that found favor was the construction of a canal. About a century ago, in 1766, shortly after the Duke of Bridgewater's Canal had been opened between Worsley and Manchester, a movement was set on foot at Darlington with the view of having the country surveyed between that place and Stockton-on-Tees. Brindley was requested to lay out the proposed line of canal; but he was engrossed at the time by the prosecution of the works on the Duke's Canal to Liverpool, and Whitworth, his pupil and assistant, was employed in his stead; George Dixon, grandfather of John Dixon, engineer of the future Stockton and Darlington Railway, taking an active part in the survey. In October, 1768, Whitworth presented his plan of the proposed canal from Stockton by Darlington to Winston, and in the following year, to give weight to the scheme, Brindley concurred with him in a joint report as to the plan and estimate. Nothing was, however, done in the matter. Enterprise was slow to move. Stockton waited for Darlington, and Darlington waited for Stockton, but neither stirred until twenty years later, when Stockton began to consider the propriety of straightening the Tees below that town, and thereby shortening and improving the navigation. When it became known that some engineering scheme was afoot at Stockton, that indefatigable writer of prospectuses and drawer of plans, Ralph Dodd, the first projector of a tunnel under the Thames, the first projector of the Waterloo Bridge, and the first to bring a steam-boat from Glasgow into the Thames, addressed the Mayor and Corporation of Stockton in 1796 on the propriety of forming a line of internal navigation by Darlington and Staindrop to Winston. Still nothing was done. Four years later, another engineer, George Atkinson, reported in favor of a water-way to connect the then projected Great Trunk Canal, from about Boroughbridge to Piersebridge, with the Tees above Yarm.