Delaware and Hudson Canal - Canal

Canal

The finished canal ran 108 miles (174 km), from Honesdale to Kingston (counting the tidewater portions of the Rondout where the canal joined the creek at Eddyville). Its 108 locks took it over elevation changes totaling 1,075 feet (328 m), more than the Erie Canal's 675 feet (206 m). The channel was four feet (122 cm) deep (eventually increased to six feet (2 m)) by 32 feet (10 m) wide. It was crossed by 137 bridges and had 26 dams, basins and reservoirs. Originally it crossed the four rivers along its course — the Lackawaxen, Delaware, Neversink and Rondout Creek — via slackwater dams. Aqueducts were built over the rivers to replace them by John Roebling in the 1840s, cutting a few days from canal travel time and reducing accidents that were occurring at the Delaware crossing with loggers rafting their harvest downstream.

Barges were pulled by mules along the adjacent towpath, a power source employed even after the development of steam engines, since the bow wave from a faster steamboat would have damaged the channel. Children were often hired to lead the mules at first; in the canal's later years grown men were employed. They had to walk 15–20 miles (24–32 km) a day, pump out the barges and tend the animals. For this they were paid about $3 a month.

The canal was divided into three sections for operational purposes: the Lackawaxen, from Honesdale to the Delaware; the Delaware, along the river from there to Port Jervis; and then the Neversink, from Port Jervis to Kingston. A trip along its length took, initially, a week. It was closed on Sundays, and would suspend operations each winter when the canal froze up or was likely to.

Its primary business was the transport of coal and lumber from the interior to the river. There was little traffic to Pennsylvania other than empty barges. The company tried offering passenger service at one point, and Washington Irving, a friend of Hone's, made the trip in the 1840s, but it was ultimately given up as unprofitable.