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The Morris Canal was a 107-mile (172-km) common carrier coal canal across northern New Jersey in the United States that connected the two industrial canals at Easton, Pennsylvania, across the Delaware River from its western terminus at Phillipsburg, New Jersey, to New York Harbor and the New York City markets via its eastern terminals on the Hudson River in Newark and Jersey City, New Jersey. (The canal was sometimes called the Morris and Essex Canal, in error, due to confusion with the nearby and unrelated Morris and Essex Railroad.)
With a total elevation change of more than 900ft, the canal was considered an ingenious technological marvel for its use of water-driven inclined planes, the first in the United States, to cross the northern New Jersey hills.
It was built primarily to move coal to industrializing eastern cities that had stripped their environs of wood. Completed to Newark in 1831, the canal was extended eastward to Jersey City between 1834 and 1836. In 1839, hot blast technology was married to blast furnaces fired entirely using anthracite, and the continuous high-volume production of plentiful anthracite pig iron began.
The Morris Canal eased the transportation of the new wonder fuel, anthracite from Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, to northern New Jersey's growing iron industry and other developing industries adopting steam power in New Jersey and the New York City area. It also carried minerals and iron ore westward to blast furnaces in western New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania (famously, Allentown and Bethlehem) until the development of Great Lakes iron ore caused the trade to decline.
By mid-century, railroads had begun to eclipse canals in the United States, although the Morris Canal remained in heavy use through the 1860s. It was leased to the Lehigh Valley Railroad in 1871, taken over by the state of New Jersey late in 1922, and formally abandoned in 1924. This was a common fate in the era for many enterprises formerly reliant on anthracite volume—by the 1920s, oil fuels had been steadily eroding the market share of anthracite in heating, and the automobiles were becoming common, whilst World War I had given a boost to motor truck (Lorry) development.
Although it was largely dismantled in the following five years, portions of the canal and its accompanying feeders and ponds are preserved. A statewide greenway for cyclists and pedestrians is planned, beginning in Phillipsburg, traversing Warren, Sussex, Morris, Passaic, Essex and Hudson Counties and including the old route through Jersey City.