Моррис каналы: Жаңа Жерси тарихы мен мұрасы

Canal in New Jersey

The Morris Canal (1829–1924) was a 107 mile (172 km) common carrier anthracite coal canal across northern New Jersey that connected the two industrial canals in Easton, Pennsylvania across the Delaware River from its western terminus at Phillipsburg, New Jersey to New York Harbor and New York City through its eastern terminals in Newark and on the Hudson River in Jersey City. The canal was sometimes called the Morris and Essex Canal, in error, due to confusion with the nearby and unrelated Morris and Essex Railroad. With a total elevation change of more than 900 feet (274 m), the canal was considered an ingenious technological marvel for its use of water driven inclined planes, the first in the United States, to cross the northern New Jersey hills. It was built primarily to move coal to industrializing eastern cities that had stripped their environs of wood. The canal fostered the growth of Allentown and Bethlehem. Completed to Newark in 1831, the canal was extended eastward to Jersey City between 1834 and 1836. In 1839, hot blast technology was married to blast furnaces fired entirely using anthracite, allowing the continuous high volume production of plentiful anthracite pig iron. The Morris Canal eased the transportation of anthracite from Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley to northern New Jersey's growing iron industry and other developing industries adopting steam power in New Jersey and the New York City area. It also carried minerals and iron ore westward to blast furnaces in western New Jersey and Allentown and Bethlehem in the Lehigh Valley until the development of Great Lakes iron ore caused the trade to decline. The Morris Canal remained in heavy use through the 1860s. But railroads had begun to eclipse canals in the United States, and in 1871, it was leased to the Lehigh Valley Railroad. Like many enterprises that depended on anthracite, the canal's revenues dried up with the rise of oil fuels and truck transport. It was taken over by the state of New Jersey in 1922, and formally abandoned in 1924. While the canal was largely dismantled in the following five years, portions of it and its accompanying feeders and ponds have been preserved. A statewide greenway for cyclists and pedestrians is planned, beginning in Phillipsburg, traversing Warren, Sussex, Morris, Passaic, Essex, and Hudson Counties and including the old route through Jersey City. The canal was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 1, 1974, for its significance in engineering, industry, and transportation. The boundary was increased in 2016 to include the Lake Hopatcong station in Landing.

On the canal's western end, at Phillipsburg, a cable ferry allowed Morris Canal boats to cross the Delaware River westward to Easton, Pennsylvania, and travel up the Lehigh Canal to Mauch Chunk, in the anthracite coal regions, to receive their cargoes from the mines. From Phillipsburg, the Morris Canal ran eastward through the valley of the Musconetcong River, which it roughly paralleled upstream to its source at Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey's largest lake. From the lake, the canal descended through the valley of the Rockaway River to Boonton, eventually around the northern end of Paterson's Garret Mountain, and south to its 1831 terminus at Newark on the Passaic River. From there it continued eastward across Kearny Point and through Jersey City to the Hudson River. The extension through Jersey City was at sea level and was supplied with water from the lower Hackensack River. With its two navigable feeders, the canal was 107 mile (172 km) long. Its ascent eastward from Phillipsburg to its feeder from Lake Hopatcong was 760 feet (232 m), and the descent from there to tidewater was 914 feet (279 m). Surmounting the height difference was considered a major engineering feat of its day, accomplished through 23 locks and 23 inclined planes — essentially, short railways that carried canal boats in open cars uphill and downhill using water powered winches. Inclined planes required less time and water than locks, although they were more expensive to build and maintain.

The idea for constructing the canal is credited to Morristown businessman George P. MacCulloch, who reportedly conceived the idea while visiting Lake Hopatcong. In 1822, MacCulloch brought together a group of interested citizens at Morristown to discuss the idea. The Palladium of Liberty, a Morristown newspaper of the day, reported on August 29, 1822: " Membership of a committee which studied the practicality of a canal from Pennsylvania to Newark, New Jersey, consisted of two prominent citizens from each county (NJ) concerned: Hunterdon County, Nathaniel Saxton, Henry Dusenberry; Sussex County, Morris Robinson, Gamaliel Bartlett; Morris County, Lewis Condict, Mahlon Dickerson; Essex County, Gerald Rutgers, Charles Kinsey; Bergen County, John Rutherford, William Colefax ". On November 15, 1822, the New Jersey Legislature passed an act appointing three commissioners, one of whom was MacCulloch, to explore the feasibility of the project, determine the canal's possible route, and estimate its costs. MacCulloch initially greatly underestimated the height difference between the Passaic and Lake Hopatcong, pegging it at only 185 feet (56 m). On December 31, 1824, the New Jersey Legislature chartered the Morris Canal and Banking Company, a private corporation charged with the construction of the canal. The corporation issued 20,000 shares of stock at $100 a share, providing $2 million of capital, divided evenly between funds for building the canal and funds for banking privileges. The charter provided that New Jersey could take over the canal at the end of 99 years. In the event that the state did not take over the canal, the charter would remain in effect for 50 years more, after which the canal would become the property of the state without cost.

In 1823, the canal company hired Ephraim Beach, who was originally an assistant engineer on the Erie Canal, as its chief engineer, to survey the routes for the Morris Canal. Construction started in 1824 in Newark, with a channel 31 feet (9 m) wide and 4 feet (1 m) deep. The canal started from Upper Newark Bay, followed the Passaic River and crossed it at Little Falls, then went on to Boonton, Dover, then the southern tip of Lake Hopatcong, whereupon it went to Phillipsburg. On October 15, 1825, ground was broken at the summit level at the "Great Pond" (i. e. lake Hopatcong). By 1828, 82 of the 97 eastern sections and 43 of the 74 western sections were finished. By 1829, some sections were completed and opened for traffic, and in 1830, the 38 mile (61 km) section from Newark to Rockaway was opened. Because the locks could only handle boats of , that meant that through traffic from the Lehigh Canal was impossible, requiring reloading coal at Easton.

In 1902, after a fatal crash between a Delaware and Lackawanna railroad train and a streetcar, the railroad grade was lowered (to the level it occupies today) and the Morris Canal had to make an electrically driven incline plane to bring boats up and over the railroad and Orange street, and then back down into the canal, with a pipe to carry the water across the break.

On November 1, 1830, before the whole canal was finished, the eastern side of the canal between Dover and Newark was tested with several boats loaded with iron ore and iron. These went through the planes without incident. followed by two coal laden boats went from Phillipsburg all the way to Newark.

The Morris canal carried coal, malleable pig iron, and ice. Although it is said that the Morris Canal was mainly a freight canal and not a passenger canal, Additional cargo include scrap metal, zinc, sand, clay, and farm products. Iron ore from the Ogden Mine was brought to Nolan's Point (Lake Hopatcong). In 1880 the canal transported 1,700 boatloads (about ) of iron ore.

The canal's profitability was undermined by railroads, which could deliver in five hours cargo that took four days by boat. The 1912 survey wrote, " from Jersey City to Paterson, [the canal] was little more than an open sewer but its value beyond Paterson was of great importance, no longer as a freight transit line but as a parkway." Many of the existing photographs of the working canal were shot as part of these surveys, as well as by other people who wanted photographs of the canal before its demise. The Newark City Subway, now Newark Light Rail, was built along its route.

The Morris Canal Historic District was added to the New Jersey Register of Historic Places in 1973 and to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. The canal was listed as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1980. Portions of the canal are preserved. Waterloo Village, a restored canal town in Sussex County, has the remains of an inclined plane, a guard lock, a watered section of the canal, a canal store, and other period buildings. The Canal Society of New Jersey maintains a museum in the village. Other remnants and artifacts of the canal can be seen along its former course. On the South Kearny, New Jersey, 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 inlet where the canal connected to the Hudson River is now the north edge of Liberty State Park, and the right of way of the Hudson Bergen Light Rail follows the canal for part of its length.