D & R Canal Field Trip

The D&R Canal

I made a website using HTML, for a school project. Since Blogger allows you to use HTML to make a blog post, I decided to bring my school project site here! Our teacher, Mrs. Fleming, got a grant from the Inspire Grant program so that we could learn about the D&R Canal. We went on a lot of extra field trips to get some primary sources.

Overview

So, what is the D&R Canal? Well, for starters, what is a canal? A canal is an artificial waterway made so that boats or ships can go inland. They are also made to convey water for irrigation. Okay, we got that down. Now, what does the D and the R stand for? The "D" stands for Delaware or Delaware River. The "R" stands for Raritan or Raritan River.

The canal connects the Delaware and the Raritan River. Like all canals, it is manmade. Locks were used to overcome elevation problems. They added water or removed water so that the boats floated up or down.

There did have a small problem, though. They didn't know what to build the canal on. They couldn't use cement, because it was too expensive to use. They couldn't build it straight on land, because the water might have leaked through the ground. So what did they do? They built the canal on clay. The lock, however, is made out of stone. In 1932, the Delaware and Raritan canal closed and boats don't use it anymore. They reopened the canal as a state park.

The Tools They Used

Imagine this! We live in the 21^st century. Now, if we had to build a canal, all we would have to do is take machines or robots to do the digging for us. But, the people who built the D&R Canal lived in the 18^th to 19^th century. They didn't have the technology of today. They did everything by hand! Thankfully, they did have a number of tools. Even then, imagine digging 66 miles with simple hand tools! They had:

Shovels
Picks
Axes
Nails
Adjustable wrench
Chisels
Sledgehammers

So, how do scientists know all this? Well, first of all, there are people who grew up with the building around them. So they remember all the things that happened. Also, they used archaeology, which is when archaeologists dig up things that were left behind from past events. The archaeologists found parts of shovels, axes, and nails.

Fun Facts

The whole canal is 66 miles long, from the Delaware River to the Raritan River.

There are over 160 species of birds residing in the canal state park.


Now that the canal is closed, but reopened as a state park, the towpath(Mules used to walk on both sides of the river, to pull the boat along.) is a great place for jogging, hiking, biking, and horse riding. In the canal, people also fish and row.



This is one side of the towpath.
The canal was used for about 100 years.


Canals aren't cheap! The D&R Canal had an estimated cost of $2,830,000.