Abbott Marshlands is a 3,000-acre landscape of forests, ponds, and wetlands in a densely populated region of the United States, known for both its ecology and its history. Named for naturalist and archaeologist Charles Conrad Abbott, it gained worldwide attention in the late 1800s because of his controversial theory about prehistoric people in America. Over time, the land supported Native Americans, European settlers, and an exiled king, drawn by diverse habitats rich in plant and animal life. The marshlands are recognized by the New Jersey Audubon Society as a Very Important Bird and Birding Area, with herons, egrets, red-tailed hawks, ospreys, bald eagles, ducks, beaver lodges, and muskrat holes found in and around the canal. Running through the heart of the marsh is the Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park Towpath Trail, which begins at historic Outlet Lock No. 1, an entrance to the canal from Crosswicks Creek and the nearby Delaware River. The Delaware and Raritan Canal, built from 1831 to 1834 as New Jersey's second major canal, linked Bordentown with New Brunswick, drew water from a twenty-two-mile feeder canal, extended sixty-six miles in all, and originally included fourteen lift locks. Outlet Lock 1 at Crosswicks Creek was once a busy shipping hub with engine houses, a collector's office, a lock tender's residence, and mule barns, but only the lock remains today. The canal declined by the late nineteenth century as railways outcompeted it, did not open for business in 1933, was taken over by the State of New Jersey three years later, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, became a State Park in 1974, and now the main part of the canal provides water for 1.5 million residents.
