The
Delaware and Raritan Canal
The
Delaware and Raritan Canal
Author: Linda J. Barth
Book Description: For nearly one hundred seventy years, the
Delaware and Raritan Canal has meandered across the narrow waist of New Jersey
through bustling cities, suburban towns, and rural landscapes. One of the most
successful towpath canals in the United States, the Delaware and Raritan carried
more tonnage in 1866 than the famous Erie Canal. Transporting mainly anthracite
coal, the Delaware and Raritan also stimulated industries as diverse as
Roebling's wire-rope factory in Trenton, Johnson & Johnson pharmaceuticals in
New Brunswick, and Fleischmann's Distillery in East Millstone. Today, as the
centerpiece of the Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park, the canal provides the
people of central New Jersey with both a water supply and a premier recreational
facility.The Delaware and Raritan Canal introduces you to this manmade waterway
through some two hundred historical photographs and postcards. In these pages,
discover the locks, aqueducts, and machinery that enabled the waterway to
transport military men and supplies between New York and Philadelphia during
three wars. See how inventor John Holland used the canal to deliver his Holland
VI submarine to Washington for its naval trials and how luxury yachts, including
J.P. Morgan's Tarantula, cruised the waterway. The Delaware and Raritan Canal
documents a historical and recreational gem in the heart of New Jersey.
Pages: 128
Author Bio: Linda J. Barth grew up in the canal town of South
Bound Brook. For nearly two decades, she has served on the board of the Canal
Society of New Jersey and has also been the curator of the Mule Tenders Barracks
Museum in Griggstown. A retired teacher, Linda J. Barth is the author of many
canal and travel articles and leads canal tours throughout the Northeast.
The
Delaware and Raritan Canal at Work
Author: Linda J. Barth
Book Description: The Delaware and Raritan Canal connected the
Chesapeake Bay with New England ports, allowing a wide variety of vessels to use
the waterway and avoid the treacherous Atlantic Ocean. The unusual machinery of
the canal—locks, swing bridges, aqueducts, spill gates—is depicted in detail in
The Delaware and Raritan Canal at Work. The book focuses on many of the
businesses that operated along the canal, including farms, food-packing
companies, rubber-reclaiming plants, coal yards, quarries, Johnson & Johnson,
and Atlantic Terra Cotta. It includes scenic views along this famous waterway,
one of the most successful towpath canals in the United States. Pages:
128
Author Bio: For The Delaware and Raritan Canal at Work, Linda J.
Barth selected vintage images from the Canal Society of New Jersey, the Franklin
Township Public Library, and private collections. The author of Arcadia’s first
book on the Delaware and Raritan Canal, as well as numerous canal and travel
articles, she grew up in the canal town of South Bound Brook. A longtime member
of the board of the Canal Society of New Jersey, she leads tours on canals
throughout the Northeast.
The
Morris Canal:
Across New Jersey By Water and Rail
Author(s): Robert R. Goller
Book Description: The Morris Canal was not the longest canal in
the world, but it did have one superlative to its credit—it climbed higher than
any other canal ever built. In its time it was world famous, visited by tourists
and technical people from as far away as Europe and Asia. For nearly 100 years
it crossed the hills of northern New Jersey, accomplishing that feat with 23
lift locks and 23 inclined planes. From Lake Hopatcong, the canal ran westward
through the Musconetcong valley to Phillipsburg, on the Delaware River, and
eastward through the valleys of the Rockaway and Passaic rivers to tidewater at
Newark and Jersey City—a little over 100 miles horizontally and a total rise and
fall of nearly 1,700 feet vertically. The Morris Canal, once an important
soldier in the American Industrial Revolution, has been gone for most of the
twentieth century, but its memory lives on in the many photographs, postcards,
and other memorabilia that its unique presence inspired. Pages:
128
Author Bio: Bob Goller has been following the canal’s story since
1962 and has written about it extensively. Here, with more than 200 images
assembled from his own collection and from other sources, he takes readers on a
historical journey to those countrysides and settlements of northern New Jersey
where mule-drawn boats were once a familiar part of the daily scene.
Delaware and Hudson Canal and the Gravity Railroad
Author: Matthew M. Osterberg
Book Description:
From the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania at Carbondale to the Hudson River in
New York near Kingston, the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company and the Gravity
Railroad transformed long tracks of wilderness into thriving economic areas.
Conceived as an inexpensive way to transport anthracite coal, the canal began
hauling loads in 1828 to the Hudson River, where barges to New York City took
over. A leader in the technologies of the time, the canal company used the first
telegraph system in America, and when Delaware & Hudson engineer Horatio Allen
ran the locomotive Stourbridge Lion in Honesdale, he became the first to run a
commercial steam locomotive on tracks in the Western Hemisphere. The Delaware &
Hudson Canal was privately funded, and when stock was offered for sale in 1825,
it soon became the first American company capitalized at $1 million. The
Delaware & Hudson Canal and the Gravity Railroad uses fascinating vintage
photographs to tell an amazing piece of American history. It shows the mules,
the canal boats, the locomotives, and the men who ran this technological wonder,
boasting one hundred eight locks over one hundred eight miles, plus four
suspension aqueducts built by John A. Roebling of Brooklyn Bridge fame. The
Gravity Railroad is shown as well, hauling coal from Carbondale to Honesdale
over the Moosic Mountains, a rise of more than one thousand feet. The Delaware &
Hudson Canal and the Gravity Railroad tells the story of an American industrial
masterpiece.
Author Bio: Historian Matthew M. Osterberg, author of Arcadia's Matamoras
to Shohola and Port Jervis, has used historical photographs from the Minisink
Valley Historical Society and private collectors to compile this history of a
commercial endeavor that helped transform a nation.
Erie
Canal
Author(s): Erie Canal Museum, Martin Morganstein, Joan
H. Cregg
Book Description: The building of the Erie Canal was the
engineering marvel that unleashed the growth of the young nation that was the
United States. Spearheaded by the vision of Gov. Dewitt Clinton, New York State
built the waterway that opened the West to settlement and made New York City the
center of finance and commerce. Opened in 1825, the canal proved so commercially
viable that construction of an enlarged Erie Canal began just eleven years
later. The success of the canal spawned the growth of cities, towns, businesses,
and industries along its route in upstate New York. Erie Canal takes you on a
ride through the heyday of the old Erie Canal. You can swim with the Volunteer
Life Saving Corps as they sharpen their skills, view images of mule-drawn boats
wending their way through scenic countryside, and marvel at the engineering of
the bridges, aqueducts, and locks that facilitated the functioning of the canal.
Erie Canal travels a step back in time and illuminates the people whose lives
were shaped by the canal. Pages: 128
Author Bio: The Erie Canal Museum, founded in 1962, seeks to keep
Erie Canal history and heritage alive. Martin Morganstein, development director
of the museum, and Joan H. Cregg, volunteer guide and researcher at the museum,
have carefully selected from the museum's extensive collection over two hundred
images that depict life on the Erie Canal. These early images highlight canal
cities and towns and the people that gave these places their spirit and
vibrancy. They display the beauty of nineteenth-century rural New York and take
your imagination on a trip through a bygone era on the Erie Canal.
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