The Delaware Canal was a sixty-mile-long waterway built to transport anthracite coal from the mines of northeastern Pennsylvania to cities along the eastern seaboard. Opened in 1831, it had twenty-four locks that raised or lowered boats traveling between Easton and Bristol across a one-hundred-sixty-five-foot elevation change. Work on the canal began before dawn as mule teams pulled boats, conch shell horns warned locktenders of approaching traffic, and canal boat captains, muletenders, and locktenders earned their living on the waterway. The canal also shaped nearby communities, as neighboring businesses supplied canal workers and canal traffic fueled local enterprise. In 1932, the last coal-laden boat completed its trip on the Delaware Canal, and the waterway is now preserved as Delaware Canal State Park.
