page_title: Morris Canal
hierarchical_section_title: Morris Canal
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the Morris Canal, New Jersey, from 1827. "Lithogr[aphed] by Imbert."--NYPL Dictionary Catalog of the Map Division. Described in the New York Public Library's Dictionary catalog of the Map Division, VI, p. 640. Includes elevation profile of the canal. National Endowment for the Humanities Grant for Access to Early Maps of the Middle Atlantic Seaboard. NYPL copy trimmed close to neat line. Shows mines, forges, furnaces, factories, rivers, roads, and towns in the area of the Morris Canal, between the Delaware and Hudson rivers.
context_page_description: The Morris Canal was a 107-mile common carrier coal canal across northern New Jersey in the United States that connected the two industrial canals at Easton, Pennsylvania, across the Delaware River from its western terminus at Phillipsburg, New Jersey, to New York Harbor and the New York City markets via its eastern terminals in Newark and on the Hudson River in Jersey City, New Jersey.
  With a total elevation change of more than 900 feet, 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. 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.
context_section_description: The Morris Canal (1829–1924) was a 107-mile (172-km) common carrier coal canal across northern New Jersey in the United States that connected the two industrial canals at Easton, Pennsylvania, across the Delaware River from its western terminus at Phillipsburg, New Jersey, to New York Harbor and the New York City markets via its eastern terminals in Newark and on the Hudson River in Jersey City, New Jersey. (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 (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.
  It was built primarily to move coal to industrializing eastern cities that had stripped their environs of wood. 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 eastern Pennsylvania (famously, Allentown and Bethlehem) 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.
  Although it was largely dismantled in the following five years, portions of the canal and its accompanying feeders and ponds are 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.
caption: 1827 Map of the canal
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