The Delaware and Raritan Canal is one of the best-preserved and lasting vestiges of the Industrial Revolution in New Jersey. Throughout its storied past it provided a direct freight link between the coal-producing regions of Pennsylvania with the industrial powerhouse of New York.
The story of the Canal is the story of the evolution of trade and transportation in the Northeast United States during the period of its most rapid expansion, and the vital supplies provided by the canal helped fuel the dynamic growth of the antebellum North. Yet the canal is more than that. The story of the canal is the story of early America: of immigration and labor, of the development of interstate trade, of a nation obsessed with development and expansion, of Prohibition, and of war. And, if we look close enough, the canal can tell us of the America of today; of a country facing a delicate balance of energy dependency and effective transportation yet still attempting to remember our past.
Our journey along the canal starts at New Brunswick, under the Landing Lane Bridge that spans across the Raritan. The towpath itself was not designed for hikers such as us; rather it was designed for work crews and mules. Throughout the hundred-year span of the canal’s operation, it was the best way to transport large amounts of goods across New Jersey. The canal had several advantages over the few alternate routes available to those interested in moving freight. First, the alternate routes were costly and sometimes very dangerous. Coal had to be first moved from the plentiful coalfields of Pennsylvania to the major port city of Philadelphia, where it would be loaded onto barges and taken down the Delaware. From there it would have to move from the relative safety of the Delaware to the far more deadly sea route around Cape May, along the Atlantic Coast, and up the barrier islands of New Jersey to East Coast ports hungry for coal. The Jersey Shore and Long Island Sound is littered with hundreds of unnamed wrecks of schooner barges still laden with coal – lost in numerous storms, collisions, and other acts of god.
The opening of the canal coincided with the period of rapid industrialization that sent the United States to the forefront of the world economy in the late 19th century. A mule that could only pull a few hundred pounds on land was capable of hauling hundreds of tons through the canal, and the advent of the steam engine some ten years after the canal officially opened only boosted the amount of freight that could be carried to market. By the time of the civil war most of the coal used to fuel the Industrial Revolution in New York had to pass through the locks of the D&R Canal.
The D&R Canal itself runs through a largely agrarian landscape. This is in conflict with the point at which the canal joins the Raritan, which sits within comfortable walking distance of Rutgers University. Here the canal has adapted with the times, running underneath the Route 18 extension as it has since it was routed underground in 1984. Yet things change dramatically by the time one has walked only ten miles away from the start of the towpath into Bound Brook. Though the town proper of Bound Brook lies only a mile or so away from this point of the river the atmosphere is decidedly bucolic, and it tends to remain that way all the way to Princeton. The farms here were the ones that helped support Continental troops as they fought for independence in the Revolutionary War.
Right in the middle of this farmland is a reminder that while New Jersey is a blue state, the religious right remains alive and well in some enclaves. Somerset County’s Zarephath is a Pentecostal religious community with its own exit off of Route 287. Formed in 1901 by Alma White, the Pillar of Fire church relocated here from Denver, Colorado in 1907 and have been teaching bible worship here ever since. At one point the college was an accredited four-year university, but since the 1970s this particular sect has cut itself off from the outside world, preferring to stay on their land and pay any of their bills using farming revenue. There is even a radio station on campus, broadcasting contemporary Christian music and talk radio throughout the tri-state area. Despite all the outreach the church has made, walking through their compound on a Sunday draws a lot of looks that make one feel a lot less than welcome. Perhaps it is their theology of the corruption brought about by our society and the need to repent on Sundays that makes them so recalcitrant, yet nevertheless there is a distinct air about Zarephath that conveys a “less time spent here the better” message to the casual hiker.
One of the major draws of the canal route is to examine the actual machinery that made the canal a success. All along the route are spillways which helped control the water level and kept it flowing in a roughly easterly direction to facilitate trade. If one feels particularly adventurous one could walk across them. Of course, if one chooses to do this at the inopportune time then one can be rapidly caught in a situation that makes a nice, normal hike into a Discovery Channel special, such as just before a thunderstorm as this particular author did. Along with the spillways are gates that vent the tremendous amount of water held in the canal into the Raritan. The actual lock houses which housed the lockmasters and their families are still mostly intact, and two have been put on the National Historic Register.
Our journey ends with Carnegie Lake in Princeton. If one has any question about the power of industrialists during the 20th century one only has to look at Lake Carnegie. Bought singlehandedly by investors and Princeton alumni, Lake Carnegie was built not to add natural beauty to the area but to give Princeton a place for their crew team to practice without having to go on the too-fast Raritan or too-busy D&R Canal. The lake was built with no regard to the flood plan of the area or nearby sewage systems emptying into the Millstone River and is now not the ideal picnicking spot for Princeton students. However, to not build the lake was to defy Andrew Carnegie’s plan to provide a lake for Princeton, and was thus unthinkable – after all if Carnegie’s fortune existed today it would represent three times the wealth Bill Gates has accrued through Microsoft.
To conclude, we travel back to Bound Brook to look across the trestle bridge that spans the Raritan. Several times a day trains loaded with freight amble past this very picturesque slice of the Garden State, destined eastbound along the rails laid by the United New Jersey Railroad and Canal Company. By the 1870s it was obvious that railroads were a faster mode of transportation then the canal. However, neither the canal nor the state (which had invested the equivalent of millions of dollars in the canal project) was interested in dealing with any competition that would emerge from laying down a rail line that offered the same route as the canal. As a result, the company merged with a bunch of private railroading firms who had taken the initiative to lay down track and leased out a line running exactly parallel with the main canal through the Pennsylvania Railroad. The company formed would eventually build the great railroad lines of New Jersey and greatly contribute to the rail network that links our state today: the stretch of line running from Trenton north is now part of America’s busiest rail corridor, Amtrak’s famed “Northeast Corridor,” the Princeton Branch operates at the behest of New Jersey Transit, PATH trains run along an active freight line placed to transport freight parallel to the Northeast Corridor, and Conrail still maintains the freight lines which run alongside the quiet Raritan. The canal was no match for the powerful conglomerated companies which would lay their lines from Washington, D.C. to Boston and all points in between. Their legacy lies in the frequently overlooked colossal construction projects which mark their major hubs: Penn Station in New York, Broad Street in Philadelphia, Union Station in Washington, and Union Station in Chicago come to mind. By the 1930s the jig was up on the canal, which had more than paid for itself by its close. The canal was abandoned by the companies that built it but instead of being developed, it was absorbed by the 1970s into New Jersey’s Division of Parks and Forestry. It is now central to an argument about the use of public space throughout the United States as it has proven the concept of a “greenway” project, or a strip of ecologically interesting area that serves as a multi use trail and provide its own buffer zone to prevent commercial use of the projects assets – assets such as development or reclamation that run counterproductive to the evolution of a true greenway project. These projects have come into an unexpected enemy as others saw the Greenway as an excuse to preserve the middle class communities that have sprung out around them. Thanks to naysayers like Tim Hartford, the Greenway method has come under fire despite the noble cause to expand their Greenways across the country, making linear stretches of unusable canal into parkland and connecting them to create an interstate system of greenways for enjoyment, much as the Appalachian Trail has opened the East Coast to the concept of one challenging hiking trail for the enjoyment of both day hikers and serious enthusiasts. Hartford argues that these Greenways only seek to maintain suburban communities as they are by preventing large swaths of area from being developed upon. Another argument is that Greenways induce strange patterns of urban sprawl as people seek to settle in cities that need to expand and can’t follow the natural path of expansion because it is protected by a Greenway. Greenways are also by definition harder to transverse for non-hikers and can damage efforts at public transportation to some extent. However, just sitting in Bound Brook “at the banks of the old Raritan” as it were, it’s hard to argue with the forgotten natural beauty of the Raritan and agree with those who want a green way. It’s a rare jewel, a slice of calm heaven and clean air within a three hour walking distance of a nice, tasty grease truck sandwich on State Street in New Brunswick.
Only in New Jersey could such things be possible.
The gravel and cobblestones can be a bit harsh on feet, unless you have a really high-impact insole. Yet the trail has almost zero elevation because it runs alongside the river. Bring a couple of cars unless you intend on turning around, and watch out for the weather, it can come up fast and with little warning because of the canopy - though the canopy does keep inclement weather away from the sides and provides shade on sunnier days.
