Delaware Canal
Williams Township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
The canal channel, which parallels the Delaware River, lies just below the highway. Here are Locks No. 22 and 23, the last lift locks in the 60 miles of canal from Bristol to the Lehigh River at Easton.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Just below the highway runs the channel of the Delaware Canal, the towpath waterway that once carried anthracite coal and freight along the Delaware River. Here stand Locks No. 22 and 23, the final lift locks in the 60-mile run from Bristol up to the Lehigh River at Easton. In the canal era, such locks stepped boats up and down the changing elevations, letting mule-drawn barges move heavy cargo before the railroads took over.
Why it matters
The Delaware Canal is one of the best-preserved reminders of the canal age that first linked Pennsylvania's coalfields to its cities and markets.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the first half of the 1800s, before railroads spread their web across the country, water was the great mover of heavy freight. Rivers were fickle and often too shallow or too wild for reliable hauling, so Americans dug canals — patient, hand-built channels that gave boats a calm, controlled path alongside the natural waterways.
Eastern Pennsylvania was at the heart of this canal age. The region's real treasure lay inland in its anthracite coalfields, and the challenge was moving that dense, heavy fuel down to the cities and markets that hungered for it. A towpath canal running beside the Delaware River answered that need, letting mule-drawn boats carry tonnage no wagon road could match.
This stretch, tucked just below the modern highway, belongs to that world of measured water and steady mule-teams — an engineered ribbon of calm running parallel to the river's current.
People & events
The drama of a canal is quiet but ingenious, and it comes to a head at a lock. Here stand Locks No. 22 and 23 — the last lift locks in the roughly sixty miles of canal running from Bristol up to the Lehigh River at Easton.
A lift lock is a simple, beautiful solution to a hard problem: how do you float a heavily loaded boat uphill or down? You seal it inside a chamber, then add or release water to raise or lower the vessel to the next level of the canal. Do that in a series, and boats can climb or descend a changing landscape a step at a time.
That these are named as the last lift locks on the line gives them a particular significance — they mark the end of the sequence of steps a boat would pass through along this long waterway. The mule-drawn barges that once worked here carried coal and freight patiently from lock to lock, a mode of transport that ruled until the railroads eventually took the heavy work away.
Its place in the American story
The Delaware Canal belongs to a nationwide burst of canal-building that briefly reshaped American commerce in the early 19th century. For a few crucial decades, canals were the arteries that connected raw resources to industry and cities — and in Pennsylvania that meant tying the coalfields to the markets that ran on their fuel.
That era was short but transformative. Canals proved that heavy goods could move cheaply and reliably over long distances, feeding the growth of towns and factories, before the railroad arrived and largely replaced them. What survives of a canal today is a window into the transportation revolution that came just before the age of steam and steel rails.
As one of the better-preserved reminders of that age, this waterway lets you read the logic of an entire vanished economy in the shape of a channel and the stonework of a couple of locks.
If you visit
Look for the canal channel running parallel to the river, just below the roadway — a straight, deliberate line of water beside the river's natural flow. The contrast between the two is the whole story: one made by the land, one made by human hands for a very specific job.
Spend your attention on the locks. Picture a loaded boat easing into the chamber, the gates closing, the water level shifting, and the vessel rising or settling to meet the next reach of the canal. Even still and quiet, the stonework tells you how it worked.
This is ideal walking-pace history, and it fits beautifully into a slow river-corridor road trip. Bring good shoes, follow the towpath where you can, and let the flat, unhurried grade remind you of the mule-teams that once set the pace along this very route.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Nearby & related markers
Pennsylvania Canal
Williams Township, PA · est. 1949
The Pennsylvania Canal was an ambitious system of state-built public works meant to bind Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Lake Erie together with water. Its Delaware Division, running from Bristol to Easton, was begun in 1827 and operated by the state from 1831 to 1858 before passing to private owners who ran it until 1931. In 1940 the corridor was preserved as a state park, saving a rare working relic of the internal-improvements era.
The Lehigh Canal
Glendon, PA · est. 1995
Dug between 1827 and 1829, the Lehigh Canal ran 47 miles from Mauch Chunk to Easton, where it met the Delaware Canal to Philadelphia and the Morris Canal to New York. It was a vital artery for hauling anthracite coal out of Pennsylvania's hard-coal region, fueling the rise of the anthracite iron industry that powered the young nation's growth. The canal ran in full operation until 1932, and this restored section reopened in 1976.
Delaware Canal
Durham Township, PA · est. 1949
Here at Lock No. 21, one of twenty-three lift locks numbered from Bristol to Easton, the Delaware Canal carried boats over Cooks Creek by aqueduct. The nine aqueducts along the route floated both water and freight across the streams feeding the Delaware River. In the canal's heyday, mule teams plodded the towpath hauling coal and goods through this quiet stretch of Bucks County.
Delaware Canal
Tinicum Township, PA · est. 1949
The little canal community once called Mexico took the name Uhlertown from Michael Uhler, a boatbuilder who ran his own line of boats along the Delaware Canal. Lock No. 18 and the tidy buildings clustered around it survive as reminders of the busy waterway era. In the mid-19th century, places like this hummed with the traffic of mule-drawn boats hauling coal and freight.