The Morris Canal (1829–1924) was a 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 (erroneously) called the Morris and Essex Canal, p. 112, 117. Here are two cases in a historical book where it's confusingly called the Morris and Essex Canal in the two photo captions, but for the chapter, and in the main text, it's called the Morris Canal (p. 111 ff). due to confusion with the nearby and unrelated Morris and Essex Railroad.
With a total elevation change of more than , 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 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.Morris Canal Greenway Plan North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority The canal was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 1, 1974, for its significance in engineering, industry, and transportation. With The boundary was increased in 2016 to include the Lake Hopatcong station in Landing. With accompanying 18 photos
Description 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 long. Its ascent eastward from Phillipsburg to its feeder from Lake Hopatcong was , and the descent from there to tidewater was . 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.
History
The idea of constructing the canal is credited to Morristown businessman George P. MacCulloch, who reportedly conceived it 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:
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 .
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.
Construction 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.Goller p.12 Construction started in 1824 in Newark, with a channel wide and 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.Drago p. 116
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 section from Newark to Rockaway was opened. P. 3
Because the locks could only handle boats of , that meant that through traffic from the Lehigh Canal was impossible, requiring reloading coal at Easton.Drago, p. 119
Design and building of the inclined planes
The vertical movement on the Morris Canal was , in comparison with less than on the Erie Canal, and would have required a lock every , which would have made the costs prohibitive.HAER NJ-29 p. 4 James Renwick, a professor at Columbia University, devised the idea of using inclined planes to raise the boats in , instead of using about 300 lift locks, since a lift lock of that time typically lifted about .Drago gives this figure of 6 feet on p. 119, although many canals had locks with a lift of 8 feet, e.g. the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which has some locks with a lift of 10 feet. In the end, Renwick used only 23 inclined planes and 23 locks. Lock dimensions were originally wide and long.
Renwick's original design seems to have been to have double tracks on all inclined planes, with the descending caisson holding more water; thus, the system theoretically would not have needed external power.Goller p. 11 Nevertheless, the inclined planes were built with overshot water wheels to supply power.
The early planes were done by different contractors and differed greatly. In 1829, the canal company hired David Bates Douglass from West Point, who became the chief engineer of the planes. He supervised the construction of the remaining planes to be built and also altered the already built planes.
The inclined planes had a set of tracks, gauge about , running from the lower level up the incline, over the crest of the hill at the top, and down into the next level. Tracks were submerged at both ends. A large cradle, holding the boat, ran on the tracks.HAER NJ-29 p. 5 Iron overshot waterwheels originally powered the planes.HAER NJ-29 p. 6
The Scotch (reaction) turbines, which later replaced the overshot water wheels, were feet in diameter and made of cast iron. They could pull boats up an 11% grade. The longest plane was the double-tracked Plane 9 West, which was long and lifted boats up (i.e. 6% grade) in 12 minutes. The total weight of the boat, cargo, and cradle was about .
The Scotch turbines produced (for example, on Plane 2 West) 235 horsepower using a head of water and had a discharge rate of per minute. Some turbines were also reported to develop 704 horsepower. The winding drum was in diameter and had a spiral grove of pitch. The rope was fastened on both ends to the drum, and there was a clutch that allowed the direction of the wheel to be reversed. The plane had two lines of steel rails, with a gauge of from center of rail to center. Rails were wide at top and high, and weighed . The cradle had a brake, in case the load went downhill too fast. Descent was also checked by the plane-man by putting about half power through the turbine. The water was fed into the turbines from below, thus relieving friction on the bearings and balancing them.
A comparison of Plane 2 West (Stanhope), which had a lift, with a flight of 12 locks yields the following: the plane took 5 minutes 30 seconds, and consumed of water lifting a loaded boat. Locks , meaning of water per lock) would consume for 12 locks (about 23 times more water) and would take 96 minutes.
The Elbląg Canal, one of Seven Wonders of Poland, used the Morris Canal's technology as inspiration for its inclined planes; for that reason, the inclined planes on that canal strongly resemble those on the Morris Canal.
The Newark Eagle reported in 1830: The machinery was set in motion under the direction of Major Douglass, the enterprising Engineer. The boat, with two hundred persons on board, rose majestically out of the water; in one minute it was upon the summit, which it passed apparently with all the ease that a ship would cross a wave of the sea. As the forward wheels of the car commenced their descent, the boat seemed gently to bow to the spectators and the town below, then glided quickly down the wooden way. In six minutes and thirty seconds it descended from the summit and re-entered the canal, thus passing a plane one thousand and forty feet long, with a descent of seventy feet, in six and one half minutes.
An English visitor, Fanny Trollope, in her 1832 book Domestic Manners of the Americans, wrote of the canal:
We spent a delightful day in New Jersey, in visiting, with a most agreeable party, the inclined planes, which are used instead of locks on the Morris canal.
This is a very interesting work; it is one among a thousand which prove the people of America to be the most enterprising in the world. I was informed that this important canal, which connects the waters of the Hudson and the Delaware, is a hundred miles long, and in this distance overcomes a variation of level amounting to sixteen hundred feet. Of this, fourteen hundred are achieved by inclined planes. The planes average about sixty feet of perpendicular lift each, and are to support about forty tons. The time consumed in passing them is twelve minutes for one hundred feet of perpendicular rise. The expense is less than a third of what locks would be for surmounting the same rise. If we set about any more canals, this may be worth attending to.