Minisink Indians traveling between the Delaware and Hudson Rivers followed the valley they called Shawangunk, meaning "southward," and later that name was applied to the mountains to the east. In the early 18th century, colonists used this same level route, calling it Old Mine Road from legends that Dutch prospectors had used it to reach copper or silver deposits in New Jersey. By 1756, it had become a highway for wagons and stagecoaches. The need to move anthracite coal from Pennsylvania to city markets led Maurice and William Wurts of Philadelphia to build the Delaware and Hudson Canal, and with John B. Jervis as chief engineer, the 108-mile canal from Honesdale, Pennsylvania, to Kingston on the Hudson was completed in 1828. A long stretch of the canal paralleled the overland route, carrying chiefly coal but also lumber, cement, other products, and passengers, bringing growth and prosperity to the region. Railroads, first built to feed the canal, gradually took over until little coal moved on the canal, which was abandoned in 1899, and a modern highway now follows the old thoroughfare, chiefly serving the Catskill resorts.