Morris Canal

Morris Canal
Lock 3 West at Waterloo Village, New Jersey
1827 map of the canal
Specifications
Length	107 miles (172 km)
Maximum boat length	87 ft 6 in (26.67 m)
Maximum boat beam	10 ft 6 in (3.20 m)
Locks	23 locks + 23 inclined planes
Maximum height above sea level	914 ft (279 m)
Status	Closed
History
Original owner	Morris Canal and Banking Company
Principal engineer	Ephraim Beach
Other engineer(s)	James Renwick, David Bates Douglass
Date of act	December 31, 1824
Construction began	1825
Date of first use	1829
Date completed	May 20, 1832
Date closed	1924
Geography
Start point	Phillipsburg, New Jersey, U.S. (Cable Ferry connected across the Delaware River to the Lehigh River and Pennsylvania Canal's river gate lock.)
End point	Jersey City, New Jersey, U.S. (originally Newark, New Jersey, U.S.)
Connects to	Lehigh Canal
Morris Canal
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. Historic district
New Jersey Register of Historic Places
Location	Irregular line beginning at Phillipsburg and ending at Jersey City
NRHP reference No.	74002228[1] (original) 16000177[2] (increase)
NJRHP No.	2784; 5503[3]
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	October 1, 1974
Boundary increase	April 19, 2016
Designated NJRHP	November 26, 1973 February 18, 2016
Route map Legend 1871 Delaware River Plane 11W Phillipsburg Lock 10W Lock 9W Pohatcong Lock 8W Plane 10W Plane 9W Port Warren Plane 8W Lock 7W Plane 7W Bowerstown Lock 6W Port Colden Plane 6W Plane 5W Port Murray Lock 5W Saxon Falls Lock 4W Lock 3W Waterloo Village Plane 4W Plane 3W Lock 2W Plane 2W Lock 1W Lake Musconetcong Plane 1W summit Lake Hopatcong (feeder) Plane 1E Plane 2E Plane 3E Lock 1E Plane 4E Lock 2E Plane 5E Lock 3E Lock 4E Lock 5E Lock 6E Lock 7E Plane 6E Lock 8E Lock 9E Lock 10E Lincoln Park Lock 11E Lock 12E Plane 7E Lock 13E Plane 8E Plane 9E Plane 10E Lock 14E Pompton feeder lock Passaic River Aqueduct Little Falls Paterson Clifton Plane 11E Bloomfield Lock 15E Lock 16E Newark Plane 12E Lock 17E Lock 18E Lock 19E Lock 20E Passaic River Hackensack River Lock 21E Lock 22E Jersey City Hudson River This diagram: view talk edit

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,^[4] in error, due to confusion with the nearby and unrelated Morris and Essex Railroad.

With a total elevation change of more than 900 feet (270 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.^[a]

It was built primarily to move coal to industrializing eastern cities that had stripped their environs of wood.^[5][b] 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.^[8]

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.^[9] The canal was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 1, 1974, for its significance in engineering, industry, and transportation.^[10] The boundary was increased in 2016 to include the Lake Hopatcong station in Landing.^[11]

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