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BY ERIC MODEL
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
JOURNEYS INTO NEW JERSEY
In our history books considerable attention is given to the Erie Canal for how it changed America by establishing new markets and a new way traveling when it opened on October 26, 1825.
It was the first transportation system between the eastern seaboard (New York City) and the western interior (Great Lakes) that did not require portage, was faster than carts pulled by draft animals, and cut transport costs by about 95 percent.
Lesser recalled is that New Jersey had its own canals and they too played an important role in the development of our state and our nation.
There were two primary canals in the state's history.
The Morris Canal, in use from the late 1820s until the 1920s, ran across the northern part of the state. The Delaware and Raritan Canal (D&R Canal), located in central New Jersey, was built in the 1830s and served to connect the Delaware River to the Raritan River.
The Morris Canal stretched from Phillipsburg along the Delaware at its western end to Jersey City along the Hudson at its east. Initially completed to Newark in 1831, the canal was extended eastward to Jersey City between 1834 and 1836. It played a significant role in facilitating the transport of Lehigh Valley coal to industry in New Jersey and New York City. It also carried iron ore westward through New Jersey to iron furnaces in western New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania until eventually replaced by the development of Great Lakes iron ore.By the 1850s, the canal began to be eclipsed by the construction of railroads, although it remained in heavy use throughout the 1860s. It was leased to the Lehigh Valley Railroad in 1871, taken over by the state of New Jersey late in 1922, and formally abandoned in 1924. Between 1924 and 1929, it was largely dismantled.
The Newark City Subway, now Newark Light Rail was built along its route. It was considered a technical marvel because of its extensive use of inclined planes to overcome the large elevation changes necessary to cross the northern New Jersey hills.
Although it was largely dismantled in the following five years, portions of the canal and its accompanying feeders and ponds are preserved in places across northern New Jersey. Important among these is Waterloo Villages, the restored canal town in Sussex County, which contains many features of the canal, including the remains of an inclined plane, a guard lock, a watered section of the canal, a canal store, and other period buildings.
The inlet where the canal connected to the Hudson River is now the north edge of Liberty State Park. Other remnants and artifacts of the canal can be seen along its former course.
For example, on the South Kearny peninsula, where the canal ran just south of and parallel to the Lincoln Highway, now U.S. Route 1-9 Truck, the cross-highway bridges for Central Avenue and the rail spur immediately to its east were built to span the highway and the canal, resulting in spans that today seem unnecessarily long.
The D&R Canal was built in the as an efficient and reliable means of transportation of freight between Philadelphia and New York, especially coal. Before the advent of the railroads, the canal allowed shippers to cut many miles off the route from the Pennsylvania coal fields, down the Delaware, around Cape May, and up along the (occasionally treacherous) Atlantic coast to New York City.
The canal's greatest usage occurred during the 1860s and 1870s, when it was used primarily to transport coal from Pennsylvania to New York City, which had entered the Industrial Revolution. On May 18, 1872, the D&R Canal Company was merged with several parallel railroads into the United New Jersey Railroad and Canal Company, and leased by the Pennsylvania Railroad. Over time, as was the case with the Morris, the importance of the D&R Canal waned as railroads were used to perform, more rapidly, the same function as canals, but it remained in operation until 1932.
In its peak period, the canal was used for transportation, New Jersey's landscape was mostly rural, and its primary business was agriculture.
Years later, the section between Trenton and Bordentown was filled for various road and rail projects, leaving the feeder waters to solely supply the main canal from Trenton northwards to New Brunswick. Two other sections of the canal were piped underground: one in Trenton when the Trenton Freeway (Route 1) was constructed in 1952, and the other in New Brunswick when the Elmer Boyd Parkway Extension (Route 18) was constructed in 1984.
Today it is a place of recreation. In 1974, most of the canal system was declared a New Jersey state park. It remains one today, and is used for canoeing, kayaking, and fishing. A graded natural-surface trail along the side of the canal, which was the tow path that mules used to tow barges on the canal before steam powered barges, is now used for hiking, jogging, bicycling, and horseback riding. Some 36 miles (58 km) of the main canal, and all 22 miles (35 km) of the feeder canal, still exist.
The feeder canal along the Delaware, being a former railroad rather than a towpath, is especially suited to bicycling. The park is operated and maintained by the New Jersey Division of Parks and Forestry.
The canal is accessible from many points along its route, with small parking areas providing access at most road crossings. One of the most scenic and popular sections of the D&R Canal state park is the segment along Lake Carnegie in Princeton, which features the canal on one side of the path and the lake on the other side. Another attractive section borders the Colonial park Arboretum and Gardens in East Millstone.
Another important but less known canal was the Washington Canal, in Sayreville — which connected the South River and the Raritan, allowing shipping to avoid several loops on the South. Chartered in 1823, it was built in 1824-25 starting in Washington (now South River).
These days this legacy of the canal era is recalled thanks to the efforts of the Canal Society of New Jersey.
Formed in 1969, the society fosters the study of New Jersey's two towpath canals. They also work to preserve and restore canal remains and artifacts, as well as educate the public in this history. The Canal Society of New Jersey maintains a museum in Waterloo Village. They also stage an annual Canal Festival there during the summer where one can even enjoy the music, food and educational events riding a canoe and kayak along the canal.
