Delaware and Hudson Railway - Delaware and Hudson Canal Company

Delaware and Hudson Canal Company

Main article: Delaware and Hudson Canal See also: Delaware and Hudson Gravity Railroad

In the early 1820s, Philadelphia merchant William Wurts, who had explored the sparsely settled regions of Northeastern Pennsylvania, realized the value of the extensive anthracite deposits. He interested his brothers in the idea of building a canal to make it easier to transport it to New York City, which was feeling the effect of import restrictions on British bituminous coal which it had been relying on.

The Delaware and Hudson Canal Company was chartered by separate laws in the states of New York and Pennsylvania in 1823, allowing William Wurts and his brother Maurice to construct the Delaware and Hudson Canal. In January 1825, its public stock offering following a demonstration of anthracite heating in a Wall Street coffeehouse raised a million dollars.

Ground was broken on July 13, 1825, and the canal was opened to navigation in October 1828. It began at Rondout Creek at the location known as Creeklocks, between Kingston (where the creek fed into the Hudson River) and Rosendale. From there it proceeded southwest alongside Rondout Creek to Ellenville, continuing through the valley of the Sandburg Creek, Homowack Kill, Basha Kill and Neversink River to Port Jervis on the Delaware River. From there the canal ran northwest on the New York side of the Delaware River, crossing into Pennsylvania on Roebling's Delaware Aqueduct at Lackawaxen and running on the north bank of the Lackawaxen River to Honesdale.

To get the anthracite from the Wurts' mine in the Moosic Mountains near Carbondale to the canal at Honesdale, the canal company built the Delaware and Hudson Gravity Railroad. The state of Pennsylvania authorized its construction on April 8, 1826. On August 8, 1829, the D&H's first locomotive, the Stourbridge Lion, made history as the first locomotive to run on rails in the United States. Westward extensions of the railroad opened to new mines at Archbald in 1843, Valley Junction in 1858, Providence in 1860 and Scranton in 1863. Passenger service began west of Carbondale in 1860.

The canal was a successful enterprise for many of its early years, but the company's management realized that railroads were the future of transportation, and began investing in stock and trackage. In 1898 the canal carried its last loads of coal and was drained and sold. The next year the company dropped the "Canal" from its name. The remaining fragments of the canal were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1968.