By an act of legislature of the State of New Jersey dated December 31, 1824, the Morris Canal and Banking Company, as a private company, was chartered to build an artificial navigable waterway as a public highway across northern New Jersey within 15 years. 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 remained in effect 50 years more, after which the canal became the property of the State without cost. The original company failed in 1841, was reorganized in 1844 with banking privileges dropped in 1849 leaving only a canal operating business.

The canal was intended to connect Phillipsburg, New Jersey on the Delaware River with the tidewaters of the Passaic River. The canal was totally hand dug four to five feet deep 109 miles long completed in 1831but was extended to Jersey City on the Hudson River from 1834 to 1836. What was truly exceptional about this canal was the use of inclined planes as well as locks to gain elevation. It was the only canal in America to use the inclined plane. The canal boats loaded onto railroad carriages were hauled by wire rope (supplied by John A. Roebling’s company) up and down the inclines to the level of the waterway. The canal primarily facilitated carrying coal from Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley to fuel New Jersey’s growing iron industry and on return carried iron ore to western New Jersey and Pennsylvania among other types of freight.

By the1850s, the canal began to be eclipsed with the construction of railroads. It remained in use through the 1860s for hauling coal and freight. In 1871 Asa Packer’s Lehigh Valley Railroad Company leased the canal to gain the canal’s terminals at Phillipsburg and Jersey City to control the fees being charged for shipment of Pennsylvania coal by the Central Railroad of New Jersey. The Lehigh Valley Railroad did not make money on the lease. By leasing the Morris Canal and Banking Co., Asa Packer gained a foothold for his railroad to cut out using the Central Railroad of New Jersey to carry Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal to the Northeast markets especially in New York City (a letter from Cornelius V. Roosevelt, a New York banker and real estate investor and grandfather of President Theodore Roosevelt, reflects New York business dealings). This collection of business papers illustrates the large variety and volume of freight carried by the Morris Canal during the period from the 1850s through the mid 1860s.

In the 1890s, talk began of abandoning the Morris Canal. The railroads had surpassed its usefulness as a public highway and an economical way to haul freight. The Morris Canal was taken over by the State of New Jersey in 1922 and formally abandoned in 1924 being dismantled during the following years.

Portions of the canal are preserved today such as the Waterloo Village near Stanhope, N.J., the Morris Canal Park in Clifton, N.J. and nearby the Liberty State Park in Bayonne, N.J.

The Morris Canal was considered a technical marvel in its day because of the extensive use of inclined planes to overcome the large elevation changes across northern New Jersey hills. An 1827 map illustrating the proposed entire length of the canal is included in the collection as well as an 1893 map of Lake Stanhope, a reservoir for the canal feeders, from the Lehigh Valley Railroad. On the canal’s western end (Phillipsburg, N.J.) a cable ferry allowed the Morris Canal boats to cross the Delaware River to Easton, PA and thereby enter the Lehigh Canal to travel up to Mauch Chunk (renamed Jim Thorpe) and White Haven in the Pennsylvania anthracite coal region.