The Chesapeake & Delaware Canal is a 14-mile-long, 450-foot-wide and 35-foot-deep ship canal that connects the Delaware River with the Chesapeake Bay in the states of Delaware and Maryland in the United States. The C&D Canal is owned and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Philadelphia District. The project office in Chesapeake City, Maryland, is also the site of the C&D Canal Museum and Bethel Bridge Lighthouse. The canal saves approximately 300 miles on the route between Wilmington and Philadelphia on the Delaware River, and the major Chesapeake Bay ports such as Baltimore, Richmond, and the Hampton Roads, avoiding a course around the Delmarva Peninsula.
The canal is itself a significant landmark and cultural boundary for the state of Delaware, considered a divide between the urbanized northern portion of the state and the rural southern portion known locally as "Lower Delaware", and demarcates an unofficial northern limit to the Delmarva Peninsula.