The Delaware Raritan Canal is a state park, a pretty extraordinary state park, stretching more than 70 linear miles, from Bordentown, on the Delaware River, to New Brunswick on the Raritan. It’s a favorite destination in central Jersey for hiking and especially for canoeing and kayaking.
The canal is currently celebrating it’s fiftieth anniversary as a state park. Over the years, I’ve spent thousands of hours in and along the canal, in Princeton, Kingston, Griggstown, Blackwells Mills and Weston, canoeing, hiking and for some twenty-five years, driving to and from work. Commuting in New Jersey can be horrific, especially approaching the bridges to NYC or Philadelphia. Here’s a picture of “my” bridge crossing.
Of course, the canal wasn’t built for recreation. It was built for commerce. The canal opened in 1834, in a competitive partnership with the railroads. The canal was built to transport freight from Philadelphia to New York. At the canal’s highpoint, in 1866, nearly three tons of freight made the trip by barge. 80% of the freight was anthracite. Boats paid two cents per mile to use the canal. Freight was charged by the pound. Shipping tobacco by canal cost half a penny per pound; liquor six-tenths of a penny. Bridge tenders managed the swing bridges (“Low bridge, everybody down. Low bridge ‘cause we’re coming to a town”). Lock tenders managed the steep changes in water level at the locks.
The canal stopped making a profit in the late 1890s, as railroads, and later, trucks, took over most of the business. The canal closed as a commercial venture in 1933. Recently, I learned a fascinating bit of history. The first Nazi youth camp in America operated on the banks of the canal in 1934.
According to “A Princeton-Area Nazi Boys Camp and Civil Liberties in New Jersey in the 1930s” located in the Princeton University archives,
“The people of Princeton were on edge one summer in 1934. Six miles away on the banks of the Delaware & Raritan Canal in Griggstown, 200 boys ranging in age between 8 and 16 from New York, Buffalo, and Philadelphia were camping in tents that bore swastika emblems, wearing uniforms apparently modeled on the Brown Shirts, singing and speaking in German and conducting daily military-style drills under the supervision of Hugo Haas, a 23-year-old German immigrant they referred to as der Fuhrer.” (downloaded from https://universityarchives.princeton.edu/2021/06/a-princeton-area-nazi-boys-camp-and-civil-liberties-in-new-jersey-in-the-1930s/)
My next book, The Other, is set at a fictional lock tender’s house on the banks of a fictional canal. The story is fictional, but it is inspired by history. What if? What if the lock tender were Jewish? What would life be like for the lock tender and his family when the Nazis came to town?
The Other is a story about standing up to hate, about anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and, in a broader sense, hate for anyone who is labelled as the other. Although the story is fictional, the problem of hate is all too real. And all too prevalent. And it is not ancient history.
Low bridge, everybody down. Low bridge ‘cause they’re coming to your town.
Jeff Markowitz 